


your night is of lilac.

by pledispristin



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, But only in like one scene, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-16 11:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pledispristin/pseuds/pledispristin
Summary: jaemin is troubled, jeno is scared, and renjun has never known how not to be invisible.





	1. forever stay gold

**Author's Note:**

> hey!!
> 
> so i want to prefix this by saying that this chapter is the longest chapter of anything i've ever written because i tried some new things with this one -- i'm trying to develop my characters more than i've historically done in my fics. if it feels a bit choppy or wooden in parts, i'm sorry -- consider this my awkward transitional phase of writing. 
> 
> i've also never officially written ot3 although i have outlined it, and i'm also sorry for anyone who came here from the nomin tag because the nomin doesn't really come in until the next chapter.
> 
> this fic came from the vague idea for a heathers au that i thought of in an exam, before i realized that i didn't have the heart to romanticize murder as the film does at times or kill any nct member. still, the main characters are vaguely based off of archetypes from the film (renjun - veronica, jaemin - jd, jeno - heather mcnamara, donghyuck - heather chandler, mark - heather duke). markhyuck are nowhere near as bad as the heathers are in the film, but i do have to say that some characters including them aren't portrayed particularly sympathetically and this in no way reflects my real thoughts about them as people -- if anyone wants to see me write markhyuck the way i actually see them, please see [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14612013).
> 
> other than putting this through spellcheck, this is unbetaed, so i have to apologize for any errors that microsoft word didn't pick up.
> 
> the work title is from mahmoud darwish's poem [your night is of lilac, and the chapter title is from wanna one's ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52547/your-night-is-of-lilac)[gold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWcMhYLcCE). [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/shahdiae/playlist/0DFcn7ybkxWTqZpgHIc7Ou?si=eDb1s2FSSp-q7h87Rx3CdA) is a spotify playlist for this chapter if you want to listen while you read.

**renjun 03:05**  
i’m just tired of being invisible you know?

 **renjun 03:05**  
having only one friend, never talking to anyone, never being noticed

 **renjun 03:06**  
its…lonely

 

The truth was, Renjun had always been invisible.

Sometimes, being invisible had its perks. You could sneak in and out of the cafeteria without anyone noticing. If your skin broke out or you got an ugly mouthful of braces, nobody commented on it. And you could easily avoid the petty politics that every high school has, simply because nobody ever asked. It was, in Renjun’s opinion, better that way.

But everything always reached a peak, and for Renjun the peak was waking up on his first day of junior year and realizing that, with his best and only friend Yukhei in Hong Kong on exchange for the year, he had precisely zero friends.

Perhaps that’s what draws him out of the bathroom stall that Monday morning when he hears the disgruntled sigh of none other than Lee Donghyuck, the youngest and unofficial leader of SM High’s brat pack. 

“It’s completely ridiculous,” Donghyuck is saying, sitting on the counter flanked by Mark and Jeno. “So I’ve got detention for getting out of class without a note? How does that even _make sense_.”

“Well, it is the rules,” Jeno says quietly, under his breath. In truth, Renjun doesn’t remember the last time he heard Jeno talk loudly. For the last few years, Renjun has Jeno as kind of the add-on, the extra to make the pack a trio, the personality-less addition. 

“I don’t follow rules,” Donghyuck says. “I _make_ the rules.”

Mark laughs coolly. “When my father hears about this, that _bat_ Kang will—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Renjun says. The three boys look at him, confused. “Just—getting one teacher in trouble won’t solve the problem that you can’t sneak out of class. You could try forging a note or something, that’d be more…” He trails off. “More helpful.”

Mark frowns. “Who are you?”

“Oh,” Renjun says. “Uh, Huang Renjun. We’ve—we’ve been classmates for the last eleven years.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Mark says. 

“I know Renjun,” Jeno says quietly. “We were friends in elementary school.” He smiles softly, a little forced. “Hi.”

That makes Renjun pause because, in truth, he’d completely forgotten. Back when they were kids until seventh grade, Renjun and Jeno had been practically inseparable. Renjun didn’t remember what changed between them, only that one day they’d been best friends and the next day they’d pretended they didn’t know each other.

“Well, I don’t know how to forge things,” Donghyuck says.

“I do,” Renjun says. “You guys are all in yearbook, right?” (It wasn’t really a question. Every year the yearbook committee took time out of class at the end of the year to put stickers over unfortunate typos and names that had mysteriously been changed. Renjun had always figured one of the trio were behind that.) “And yearbook is run by Ms. Son, and I know her signature because I had her for macroeconomics last year. So if I may…”

He reaches for one of the boys’s bags, which was lying open on the counter, tears a sheet of lined paper out of a notebook, finds a pen, and writes _Please allow Jeno, Mark, and Donghyuck to be absent from lessons, they’re aiding me with preliminary material for this year’s yearbook._ Slanted, with some of the I’s not dotted and the s’s in cursive. “Here.”

Donghyuck takes the page and holds it up to the light, as if checking for invisible ink or tea stains. “This is impressive,” he says. “Thanks for this, I’ll make photocopies of it at home.”

“Is there anything we can do to repay you?” Jeno asks. 

Renjun frowns. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll think about it.”

“A favour, then,” Donghyuck says. “Repay it whenever and count yourself lucky you got one.”

The favour isn’t the part that surprises Renjun. The part that surprises Renjun is the way Jeno looks up and shoots him a smile on his way out of the bathroom. To Jeno, he thinks, it must be just a smile. To Renjun, it’s an acknowledgement, proof that he’s been noticed, proof that he’s visible. 

Like it or not, he’s on the map now. He has to tell Yukhei.

 

Jaemin has already made the headmaster’s office home when there’s a knock on the office door. “Come in!” Mr. Lee says, not looking up from Jaemin’s file on his desk as if trying to catalogue every misdemeanour in all six of his previous schools. 

The door opens and a boy enters; around Jaemin’s age, dark-haired in a sweater and jeans. _He’s cute_ , Jaemin thinks. _A bit too clean-cut, though_. “Ah,” says Mr. Lee. “Renjun. What a coincidence, just the person I wanted to see.”

“You…called me to your office, sir,” Renjun says. “It’s not really a coincidence.” Jaemin hides a smile. _Maybe not so clean cut, huh?_

“Ah, right, yes,” Mr Lee says, clearly frazzled, putting down Jaemin’s file. “Jaemin, this is Renjun. He’s one of the best students we have at SM High. Renjun, this is Jaemin, he just moved here.” 

He looks between the two as if he’s expecting some kind of reaction. Jaemin raises a hand casually. “Salutations,” he drawls. 

Renjun nods curtly. “Nice to meet you.”

“Renjun, can you please show Jaemin around?” Jaemin bites back a sarcastic comment like _well, I wouldn’t want a good student missing class on my sake_ or _wow, I wonder what the tour guide selection process was_. “You two are in the same grade, and I wouldn’t want Jaemin to be alone.”

 _Trust me,_ Jaemin thinks. _It wouldn’t be the first time._

“Sure,” Renjun says stiffly, but he doesn’t look at all like he means it. Actually, he looks more like he’d rather be eaten alive by a shark than show Jaemin around the school. “Shall we?”

They’ve been walking the corridors in absolute silence for a few minutes before Renjun nods to a large set of doors and says, “That’s the library. Don’t go in there if you aren’t going to follow the rules, because Irene is a sweetheart and she doesn’t deserve that.”

“I’ve never met a nice librarian in my life,” Jaemin says. “Last time I went into a library the old hag at the counter started hissing at me. Pretty sure she put a witch curse on me.”

Renjun smiles tightly. “Did you do anything to incite that?”

“Knocked over a couple books, but that’s not a big deal,” Jaemin says. Renjun rolls his eyes visibly, not even trying to hide his annoyance at this point. “Anyway, I don’t wanna hear about the librarian. Tell me everything I need to know to survive at this school.”

Renjun frowns. “Depends on what you mean by survive,” he says.

“Give everyone as much hell as I can manage,” Jaemin says flippantly.

He expects Renjun to roll his eyes, look scandalized, or stop talking, but the corners of his mouth quirk upwards. “Well,” he says. “I don’t want to be aiding and abetting, but the best teacher to piss off is Seo because he has a short fuse but doesn’t hold grudges. He’s been teaching for too long and he has a class in pretty much every grade, so he probably doesn’t even remember half his students.”

“And who else,” Jaemin asks.

Renjun considers. “Jung is kind of a dick,” he says after consideration. “He makes fun of his students if they don’t do well. You know? Saying stuff like _well, you all had better revise, or you’ll end up like Eunji here_.”

“I doubt you were ever one of them, though,” Jaemin says.

Renjun nods. “You’re right,” he says. “I never gave him shit, though, unlike how I feel some people will.” Jaemin is sure he’s not imagining the twinkle in Renjun’s eye as he says it. “And I personally don’t like Kim, but that’s because I got a B- in freshman year English.”

“Your poor GPA,” Jaemin says, amused, smiling.

Renjun frowns. “Are you laughing at me?” he asks.

“Nope,” Jaemin says. “I’m in mourning. R.I.P, Renjun’s freshman year GPA.” Renjun’s frown deepens. “So what teachers are off-limits for me?”

“Oh, man,” Renjun says. “The teachers here are seriously dysfunctional. You can’t mess with Qian, because his husband left him last year. Or maybe his dog died. Really, it could be either. And Lee is a bit all over the place, but he means well. His son Mark goes here, and he’s an…” He lowers his voice. “He’s an asshole.”

Jaemin’s lips quirk upwards. “Elaborate?”

Renjun sighs. “Lee Donghyuck, Lee Jeno, and Mark Lee,” he says. “They make up the inner circle of this school’s _popular clique_ , so to speak.”

“Damn,” Jaemin says. “Are they related?”

“No,” Renjun says. “It’s just something that happened, you know?”

Jaemin laughs. “They give people a lot of shit, then?”

“I’ve never been at the tail end of it,” Renjun admits. “Generally, I stay with my own devices. People don’t really notice me.”

“Face like that, people don’t notice you?” Jaemin blurts out. Renjun frowns. “More likely that people don’t bother you because you intimidate them.”

“I’m not intimidating,” Renjun says, somewhat defensively. 

“I mean?” Jaemin says. “You’ve got this whole cheekbones thing going on, and you’re all smart and shit, and apparently you don’t talk to people your age…it really gives off that kind of impression, you know?” He considers. “Do you have a favourite poet?”

“Yes,” Renjun says. “Did that just prove your point?”

“Yep,” Jaemin says. He nods at a set of double doors, wide open, in which he could clearly see long lunch tables and smell the scent of crappy school food. “Is this the cafeteria?”

Renjun sighs. “Yes,” he says. “Come on. I still need to show you to the field.”

 

“Okay, welcome to world history,” Song says after the rest of Jeno’s class finish filing in. “My name is Miss Song, and I don’t think I’ve ever taught any of you before.” She pauses for a second. “Except you, Jungwoo. Nice to see you in my class for a second time.”

Jeno stifles a laugh as she clicks the remote for the presentation. Mark lowers his voice. “Did he fail or something?”

He takes meager notes as Song goes through the course requirements, wincing at the thought of bi-weekly homework assignments and regular group projects (“Before any of you ask, I will be assigning all groups that conduct projects in this class”). Donghyuck leans over and asks, “Mark, can you make her put the three of us together for every group?”

Song snaps her fingers together. “What’s your name?” she asks, pointing to Donghyuck.

“Lee Donghyuck,” says Donghyuck, unaffected, smirking in that insufferably confident way he always did to lighten a situation. “Happy to be here, Miss.”

“Don’t talk in my class,” Song says coldly. “Okay, can I have some people to hand out copies of the syllabus and the textbooks, please?” She clicks the remote again and the slide changes to a floor plan of the classroom. “In order to avoid this kind of behaviour, I’ve consulted my colleagues to put together this seating plan.” Jeno stares at it blankly. She’d put the three of them on different sides of the room—Donghyuck in the front right, Mark in the front left, and Jeno at the back, next to someone named _Na Jaemin_.

“Miss Song,” Mark says. “This is ridiculous. It’s affecting our ability to learn.”

“Explain?” Song says. Jeno begins to slide his books into his bag.

“I can’t focus if I’m not next to Donghyuck or Jeno,” Mark says. “If you want me to be able to pay attention in class, you should reconsider this.”

“Interesting proposal,” Song says. “That sounds an awful lot like codependency, Mr. Lee. That’s caused by either a dysfunctional family, which I know you don’t have, you can’t let go of your childhood, which I’m not sure any of you have done, or you have deep set emotional problems that you struggle to express. Perhaps I should schedule you a visit to the counselor.”

Mark flushes red. “That won’t be necessary,” he begins.

“No, I insist,” Song says. Jeno bites back a smile. “Mr Moon is very helpful. He’d be able to help you with these problems of yours.” Mark opens his mouth when she continues, “Or you could move to that seat in the corner over there and stop giving ridiculous excuses.”

Hiding a smile, Jeno moves to the back and settles his bag down next to a now-empty seat. “Are you new to the school?” he asks the person who is apparently named Na Jaemin.

“You don’t have to pretend this isn’t funny,” says the boy, running a hand through his hair. Jeno stares, confused. “What just happened. It’s fucking _hilarious_. You don’t have to hide that you’re laughing because it’s Mark.”

Jeno swallows. “I’m—it’s not—it’s not like that, I just don’t want to cause a disturbance.”

The boy smiles. “I’m Jaemin,” he says. “I am new, I just moved here.” He picks up his pen. “We probably shouldn’t talk, huh?”

It all leaves Jeno two things: firstly, slightly unsettled, and secondly, somewhat intrigued. 

 

For as long as Renjun has lived with his aunt, he’s learned to associate the sound of her humming under her breath with chaos.

“Do you really think this is enough, Renjun?” she asks, her lips pursed. “I wouldn’t know, of course, but you have so much _potential_ and you wouldn’t want to waste it, right?”

“I think it is,” Renjun says through gritted teeth. “I have enough extracurriculars, my PSAT grade is really good so when I do the SAT later this year I think I’ll do fine, and my GPA for the last two years has been fine so if I keep it up for the next while then I’ll be fine.”

Renjun’s aunt nods. “Yes,” she says. “Of course. You’re such a smart boy, Renjun, I wouldn’t want you to be wasting your talents on stupid things.” She smiles at him, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, as her smiles generally do. “Have you decided what you’re going to major in yet?”

Renjun looks away. “No,” he lies. “I—I’m not even close to deciding.”

She clicks her teeth. “Sicheng knew what he wanted to be from when he was in freshman year.”

 _Yeah, but Sicheng’s dorm room doesn’t smell of weed because of her roommate,_ Renjun wants to say, but he bites it back. He likes his cousin—ever since Renjun had showed up at the Dong household fourteen years ago because his parents had been involved in a car crash, they’d taken him in like family. He wasn’t _bitter_ about them—they were the only family he’d ever known. 

It was just that Renjun was having a very hard time dealing with _anyone_ , let alone his aunt, who for all her good traits was extremely neurotic. 

“Your father always wanted to be a dentist,” she continues. “He would’ve wanted you to carry on his dream. He wanted to start a family practice.”

Although, Renjun considers, he probably would’ve had the exact same problem no matter who in the family his guardian was.

“I’ve thought about it,” he says finally. “But I don’t really think I want to go into medicine?” He winces, preparing for impact, and adds hurriedly, “Not that it’s not a very noble practice and all, but it’s not something I can see myself doing as a career for my entire life.”

Renjun’s aunt frowned. “Renjun,” she says. “Your father—my brother—died before he could finish his dream of completing dental school and being a practicing dentist. Don’t you want to make him proud?”

And God, if there’s one thing Renjun wants, it’s for his aunt to stop bringing up his dad whenever she felt Renjun was being difficult, or whenever she wanted something from Renjun that he wasn’t willing to give. Especially since he never knew his father well enough to argue against it.

“I do,” he lies finally. “It’s just—he was my father, wouldn’t he have been proud of me regardless?”

Renjun’s aunt sighs deeply. “But your science grades are so good,” she says. “What did you get in chemistry last year? Ninety-six?”

“Ninety-three,” Renjun says. “I had to work really hard for that, though, Auntie.” She looks at him, questioning. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Well, life isn’t easy, Renjun,” his aunt says. “You have to go through challenges to be able to live a good life. Me and your uncle have been through challenges to provide for not one but two boys, and your father and mother would’ve gone through challenges for you as well. And when you get married and have children, you’ll happily go through challenges for them too.”

Renjun swallows. _I won’t have children,_ he wants to say, or maybe _I want to enjoy my life in the future_. But instead he meekly answers, “Okay, auntie. I’ll think about it.”

 

Jaemin doesn’t talk to his foster parents after school.

There’s a lot of them in the house, his foster parents being the type to take in dysfunctional older kids and give them away when they became “too much”. And if his file was to be believed, Na Jaemin was the definition of “too much”. Jaemin is the fourth one there, having replaced someone who’d just graduated from the foster system so to speak. 

Jisung is sitting at the top of the stairs when he makes his way to his room, reading a book that looks too much like a textbook for Jaemin’s tastes. “Hey,” he says, squinting up from his book through his frail round glasses. “How was school?”

“Good,” Jaemin says. He doesn’t stick around to chat, though. Jisung had been the foster child of the Moons forever; Jaemin never stayed in one place long enough to integrate into the group, not for the last two years. There was no use making friends with his foster siblings when he’d be moving away soon enough.

He closes the door of his bedroom behind him and starts to consider, glaring at the open suitcase that he refused to properly unpack, the clothes in a haphazard heap rolled together in a way that could somehow fit them. 

There wasn’t even much use making friends at school, he reminds himself. But he wanted to give people hell—it made him memorable. The Jaemin of two years ago would’ve tried to make friends—the Jaemin of now was too _troubled_ to.

Jisung raps softly on the door frame. “Can I come in?” he asks.

“No,” Jaemin says.

Jisung ignores it, walking into the room and sitting down on Jaemin’s bed. “You haven’t unpacked,” he says. 

“What an astute observation,” Jaemin says. “One would think you had already graduated middle school, what with that level of deduction.”

“It’s been a month since you arrived here,” Jisung continues. “Why are you refusing to talk to anyone?” He sighs deeply. “Me, Chenle, Herin—none of us have even _spoken_ a full conversation with you. Mom and Dad don’t even bother saying hello because they know you won’t say it back.”

“There’s the problem,” Jaemin says. Jisung frowns. “I can’t talk to you, because I’m not like you. I’d never treat my foster parents like they were my own _mom and dad_.” 

“You don’t plan on staying,” Jisung says. 

“Ding ding ding,” Jaemin answers. “How are you still in middle school, Jisung? Mind like yours should’ve skipped three grades by now.”

Jisung stares at him. Jaemin almost feels bad. The Jaemin of two years ago would’ve felt bad. “Why are you such an _asshole_?” he asks finally, standing up and storming out of the room. 

“Mind your language!” Jaemin calls behind him. Then he silences the guilt inside him and starts to scroll through his Instagram feed.

 

“Jeno.”

Jeno doesn’t look up from his notebook, focusing on the math textbook, trying his hardest to answer the problems in his homework the way he needed to answer them. 

“Hello? Jeno?”

He turns up the volume on his phone, currently playing some crappy classical music playlist that was meant to stimulate brain function. As if listening to violins automatically made stats more understandable.

“Lee Jeno, I’m talking to you.”

Jeno presses pause on his music and looks up, feigning surprise when he sees his father standing irritably in the doorway. “Oh, hi, Father,” he says. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Really,” his father says. “And you didn’t hear me asking you three times to talk to me.”

“Nope,” Jeno says. He taps the page of his notebook with his pencil. “Can you make it snappy? I’m trying to do my homework.”

“I’ve seen your report card,” his father says. “Your grades are abysmal, Jeno. I don’t think you really care that much about doing your homework.”

“Is that what you came in to talk to me about?” Jeno asks. “Because if it is, first of all, it’s super late to be giving me the lecture about working hard three months after that report card came out, and second of all, Mr. Moon has already given me the speech about applying myself.” His father stares confusedly. “You know. Mr. Moon. The school counselor.”

“You never told me you were seeing the school counselor,” his father says.

“Didn’t want to make you jealous of the functional male role models in my life.”

Jeno’s father crosses his arms. “Can I come in?” he asks curtly, and Jeno can feel the annoyance radiating from him in just those words. “Or are you going to tear my head off for suggesting it?”

“Why?” Jeno asks.

“I want to talk to you,” his father says. “We haven’t talked in so long, Jeno. And you’re my _son_. I don’t like that you’re always ignoring me, and I don’t like that you’ve started to fall down at school, and I don’t like that you’re always disappearing with those boys that you refuse to introduce me to.”

“I don’t want to introduce you to my friends because I don’t want to be embarrassed,” Jeno says. His father’s face falls—crushed, on the worn carpet of the doorway. “I don’t want to have to answer the questions of why I have a stepmother that I never talk about. I’m not doing well at school because it is _difficult_ , and I don’t _want_ to waste my energy away on _statistics_. And I ignore you because you cheated on my _mom_.”

“Jeno,” says his father. “I loved your mother. But I love your stepmother too.”

“You got remarried pretty fast, huh?” Jeno says. “If you really loved her, if you really loved my mother, you would’ve respected her memory.”

“You were in seventh grade when she died!” his father says angrily. “You didn’t know your mother like I did, Jeno!”

“Would that have helped me to understand?” Jeno asks.

“Yes,” his father said. “Yes, it would. Your mother would want me—would want _us_ to be happy. And your mother wouldn’t want you to be deprived of a mother if she couldn’t fill that role. She loved you more than anything, Jeno. I know she would’ve encouraged me to move on, and she wouldn’t want you to be harbouring all this bitterness towards me and towards Soonkyu—”

“Well, I’m really sorry to let her down,” Jeno says. “Because I’m not _happy_. And accepting you and accepting _her_ wouldn’t make me any more happy!”

His father sighs. An uncomfortable silence passes between them. Jeno turns back to his homework. “I came up here to ask you if you wanted to come out with us,” he says finally. “But clearly, the answer is no.”

“Clearly,” Jeno echoes.

“And clearly, I shouldn’t ask you anymore,” his father continues. Jeno doesn’t look away from his homework, but he can see the hopeful look on his father’s face, as if he’s hoping Jeno will deny it.

“Finally, you’ve figured something out,” Jeno says instead. He doesn’t watch as his father walks away.

The display of his phone screen lights up. _Donghyuck_ , it reads, the sound of his ringtone playing in his headphones. Jeno lets it ring.

 

Renjun wipes away his left eye and ducks into the corridor he knows by heart, confident that nobody will notice him going in the wrong direction. The mass of students are headed to the field, or the cafeteria, or somewhere else—not deeper into the school building to a classroom that hasn’t been allocated to any teacher.

The school building was built bigger than it had to be, Renjun reminds himself, trying to focus on the facts— _focus on things that keep you grounded, focus on things that you know are real, rationalize the problem but only once you’re calmed down_. Back when being a teacher was a good option, this school had been over-staffed, but as long as Renjun had attended SM High there’d always been a couple classrooms that were never used. 

Ever since freshman year, Renjun had slipped away to them when he wanted to be alone, when he wanted to be somewhere where nobody could see him and nobody would find him. Huangs never let people see them upset—but, then again, Huangs didn’t fail biology quizzes, and yet here he was.

He pushes open the door to one of them, expecting it to be empty—not expecting to see a figure leaning out of the open window as if scoping the room out.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh, I’ll—I’ll find somewhere else to go if this is—important work—or—whatever it is you’re doing.”

The figure moves back in and Renjun realizes it’s Jaemin—the new kid. It had been a few weeks since the beginning of term and Renjun hadn’t spoken to him since he’d shown him around, but he’d definitely heard the name. ( _You know that new kid, Jaemin? I heard he got expelled from his last school for selling weed brownies at a bake sale_. Or _oh my god, did you hear about what that new kid Jaemin said to Nakamoto_?) He’d never witnessed anyone become a minor celebrity at SM High so fast, but he supposed Jaemin’s edginess was somehow charming to people who didn’t have any regard for the rules. 

“Ah,” says Jaemin. “Renjun.”

“Hi,” Renjun says. He swallows. “Normally when I come here, I’m all on my own,” he adds.

“Are you hinting that you want me to leave?” Jaemin says. “I was scoping this place out. Wanted a place to spend my time at school seeing as they caught me for forging nurse notes to sneak out every other day.”

“Every other day?” Renjun asks, mildly scandalized, wondering how poor Nurse Luna had reacted when they asked her if the notes were real. Then he reminded himself that she probably dealt with that kind of thing regularly.

“A bit more than that,” Jaemin concedes. “The security here is insane.”

Renjun swallows. “Well, I would like to be alone, yeah,” he says. “But I can’t force you to do anything, and from what I hear you don’t like to be restrained.”

“From what you hear?” Jaemin repeats, moving away from the window and towards Renjun. “Am I some kind of celebrity around here? Are my dashing exploits romanticized and told as tales of charisma and—”

“Don’t inflate your own ego,” Renjun says, cutting him off. “People just talk about you, quote unquote, _roasting Choi’s ass in chemistry the other day_.”

“Jinri and I are actually on quite good terms,” Jaemin says, crossing his arms. “I’ve gotten to know her quite well over all the detentions she’s given me. I call her by her first name.”

“Does she react well to that?” Renjun asks.

“No,” Jaemin admits. “Generally it just gets me another detention.” He steps closer to Renjun, and something Renjun doesn’t recognize passes across his face for a split second, before it’s replaced by something Renjun is pretty sure is thought. “You look like you got run over by a truck,” he says finally. “Everything okay in Huang-land?”

It takes Renjun a couple of seconds to realize that Jaemin isn’t mocking him—he’s asking him if he’s alright. And it takes him a couple seconds more to recognize his thought for what it was—deliberation. Like he was trying to figure out just how to ask the question. “You took a long time to ask that,” he says. “Trying to think of a way to say it that doesn’t sound like you care?”

“Nah,” Jaemin says. “Trying to figure out what could possibly make you upset.” Renjun frowns at him quizzically. “I see you in the corridors, you know. You don’t blend in as well as you think you do. It’s pretty obvious, actually, that you think you’re too good for this school.”

“I don’t,” Renjun begins.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Jaemin says. “If it was up to me, I’d be on a yacht right now that I bought through my genius entrepreneurship, but instead I’m in this shithole.”

Renjun laughs nervously. He’s not sure how to react to Jaemin, and he wonders if that’s an affect he has on everyone or if it’s just Renjun. “Is it true you got expelled from your last school for selling weed brownies at a bake sale?”

“Is that the rumour that’s going around?” Jaemin asks. “Damn, I want people to think I’m a badass, not stupid.” Renjun frowns at him again, nodding for him to elaborate. “Well, for one, I wouldn’t sell _weed_ at a nice school fundraiser, it’s not like I want to get caught, and for two, why would I sell them at the price of a random bake sale brownie? The weed adds value, you know.”

“Entrepreneurship,” Renjun repeats sarcastically.

“Well, if the cost of production is higher, then so is the price,” Jaemin says. “Basic economics.” 

“You are a walking eighties movie stereotype,” Renjun says. “I feel like you’re the sixth person who was missing from _The Breakfast Club_.”

“Oh, can John Hughes’s ghost direct a movie about my life?” Jaemin asks wistfully. “I could be like the more badass version of Ferris Bueller.” He pauses for a second. “You never told me why you look so distressed.”

Renjun laughs. “Well, if you really want to know, I failed this biology quiz.”

“Oh, come on,” Jaemin says. “You got an A-? A B?”

“More like a D+,” Renjun says. 

“Damn,” Jaemin says. “Well, if you want, I’ll give you a call when I drop out and we can do it together. You know, like, a friendship thing.”

Renjun laughs. “I don’t think we count as friends,” he says. 

“We definitely don’t,” Jaemin says. “But it looks more dramatic that way, huh? When all these people graduate and have 2.5 kids in the house down the street from their parents, they’ll find a bag of weed in their baby’s room and tell them all about Na Jaemin, the awful drug dealer with no concept of added value.”

“And what will they say about me?” Renjun asks.

“They’ll use your tragic story as a consolation for when their kid has a 1.3 GPA,” Jaemin says. “ _See, you’re failing, but Renjun was a genius and he still dropped out so grades don’t mean anything_.”

Renjun doesn’t want to laugh. He _doesn’t_. Laughing at that would be an acknowledgment, he thinks, of their easy chemistry, the way they fell into this weird disjointed banter so fast. Laughing means that he finds Jaemin funny—that they click, in a way Renjun doesn’t want to accept.

He laughs. “What a sad story,”

 

As it turns out, Huang Renjun is not the neurotic nerd Jaemin had him pegged for.

Well, he was neurotic. And he was intelligent. And he carried himself like he hated this school because he did. But as days go by with them quietly sharing the empty classroom, not talking most days but hyperaware of the other’s presence, Jaemin realizes two things that come as a surprise.

The first thing is that Renjun is a surprisingly multi-layered person. Normally, he studies, which is what Jaemin had assumed someone like Renjun did on his lunch breaks, but not every day. He plays his music out loud some days ( _because my headphones are broken and I don’t want to ask my aunt for a new pair_ ) and it’s not whatever Jaemin expected someone like Renjun to listen to: there’s more bass than your average Mozart symphony, there’s more synths than any Beethoven he’s ever heard.

The second thing is that, Jaemin realizes one day with a shock, that Renjun is the closest thing he’s had to a friend for months. They aren’t truly friends; they don’t talk about anything that isn’t superficial, they don’t talk about their home lives, they don’t acknowledge each other outside that classroom. Jaemin thinks he likes it better that way—maintaining that distance between them, drawing lines with their friendship because they didn’t want to get _too_ close. He knows Renjun lives with his aunt and uncle, and he’s mentioned his foster parents off-handedly, but he doesn’t know anything else about who Huang Renjun is outside of this classroom and the same goes the other way.

But whatever they have, a weird pseudo-friendship born out of sharing the space of that classroom, persists despite Jaemin’s desire to stay alone and isolated. Renjun comes to the classroom a lot, spending most of his time buried in a textbook doing homework or studying. (“The library is too loud,” he explains once. “None of the freshmen listen to Irene when she tells them to shut up.”) 

Jaemin knows he doesn’t come because of Jaemin’s presence, but he also knows that his presence isn’t enough to push him away either. And despite himself, somewhere deep inside him, he takes that as a win.

 

“Jeno, can I see you after class?” Qian asks him one day as he makes his way into the classroom, looking hopefully at him as if seeing a teacher after class was something he could reject.

He stops by his desk when the bell rings, waving on Mark and Donghyuck. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about, sir?”

Qian sighs. “You’re failing stats, Jeno,” he says. “At this rate, it’ll be very difficult for you to keep up for the rest of the year if this is how you’re doing with the most basic part of the syllabus.” 

Jeno winces. “Oh,” he says, even though he knew this—he’d known he was going to do badly in stats since the first day of class. “I—what is there for me to do?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Qian says. Jeno frowns at him. “I think you’re capable of this. I pulled up your records—the standardized test that they gave you in middle school, your score suggests you would be able to cope with this easily. I think you just need some extra support.”

“Right,” Jeno says. “Okay. Cool. What do you have in mind?”

“I’ve asked one of my students from last year who passed with flying colours to check in and help you out,” Qian says. “Do you know a Huang Renjun?”

Despite himself, Jeno’s heart speeds up slightly. “We’ve met,” he says. “Is—is he going to be tutoring me?”

Qian nods. “Do you have any issues with him?”

Jeno considers. What he thought about Renjun was inconsequential here, because if he brought it up he knew Renjun would want to know what the problem was and Jeno didn’t know a simple way to say _back when we were best friends I had a crush on you and that never really went away_. And it wasn’t like he wanted to explain that to Qian, either. So he shakes his head. “No, I’m just not really that close with him so I’m worried he’ll find it a burden.”

Qian shakes his head. “Not Renjun,” he says. “Seriously, he can help you out if you want him to. He did very, very well last year.”

Jeno nods. “Okay,” he says. Internally, he’s laughing at himself, at the irony of the whole situation—after pushing Renjun away after his mom died, he’d had to fit him back into his life for however temporary a time anyway. He tries to imagine his dad’s reaction to Jeno becoming _friendly_ with Renjun again. He always had been popular at the Lee household, after all. “I’ll talk to him later, set up a time.”

Qian nods. “I know that things can be complicated, Jeno, but I think with a bit of work you could ace this subject.”

Jeno shrugs. He doesn’t want Qian’s pity—he doesn’t want people to _believe_ in him when there’s nothing to believe in.

 

 **Lee Jeno 13:26**  
Hey. 

**Lee Jeno 13:26**  
I haven’t messaged this number in years but Qian said he’d asked you to tutor me in stats?

 **Huang Renjun 13:29**  
Yeah, he did. 

**Huang Renjun 13:30**  
Should I go to yours after school? I remember the address.

 **Lee Jeno 14:15**  
Sure.

 **Lee Jeno 14:15**  
See you then.

 

Being in a place that you hadn’t been in for years fills you with a feeling that’s hard to name. 

It’s not nostalgia, Renjun thinks, because he’s not looking back on anything with wistfulness or rose-coloured glasses. It’s unsettling. Renjun almost feels as if the second he steps on the lawn, as he walks up to the door, he’ll be twelve again heading around to Jeno’s to hang out. 

In actuality, when he makes his way up to the door and knocks, a woman he’s never seen before opens the door and frowns at him. “Hello,” she says. “Are you asking for someone?”

“Is Jeno in?” Renjun asks. “I’m Renjun, I’m—his stats tutor.” The house looked exactly as it had in seventh grade; the same carpeting, the same layout. But as he stepped inside he noticed some things were different—the ornaments on the windowsill, the photos hanging up, the pattern of the wallpaper. It felt uncomfortable—like meeting an old friend for the first time in years and finding out they’re a foot taller without watching them grow to that height. 

“Ah, yes, he never said someone would be coming around asking for him but he never says anything to me,” the woman said. “I’m Soonkyu, I’m Jeno’s—stepmother.”

 _Oh,_ Renjun thinks. That explains a lot. He hadn’t known that something had happened to Jeno’s mother, but, then again, he hadn’t really been Jeno’s friend for the past few years either. “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he says, and nods towards the stairs. “Should I—”

“Yeah, Jeno’s is the second door on the landing,” Soonkyu tells him with a smile—as if Renjun already didn’t know that, as if his muscle memory hadn’t ingrained this house into his bones. 

When he reaches the top of the stairs, he raps on Jeno’s door frame. He’s sitting in his room in front of a very messy desk, scrolling idly through his phone. “Hi,” he says. “Can I come in?”

“Make yourself at home,” Jeno says absently. 

Renjun perches himself on the side of Jeno’s bed, something in his subconscious willing him to take up as little space as possible. “I didn’t know you had a stepmother,” he says as Jeno rifles through his papers.

Jeno visibly tenses at that—pausing in his shuffling of papers to turn to Renjun. “It’s—yeah. My mom died a few years back.”

“Oh,” Renjun says. He remembered Jeno’s mom—she’d doted on him, as if he was her own son, giving him the nurture and affection that Renjun had never really gotten from his aunt. “I’m sorry. I—I didn’t know.”

“Nobody does,” Jeno says. “Donghyuck and Mark have never been around here. I—I didn’t tell anyone when it happened because I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me.” He crosses his arms. “I forgot you knew her.”

“When was it?” Renjun asks. 

Jeno shrugs. “Middle of seventh grade,” he says, flippantly.

Something re-orders itself in Renjun’s mind—a question he never knew he wanted the answer for just got closed up. _Oh,_ he thinks. Seventh grade was when everything changed—when Jeno had suddenly disappeared into a totally different orbit than Renjun’s—hell, a totally different solar system. Renjun had forgotten about it until this year, but he remembered being upset at how Jeno didn’t even acknowledge him when he smiled at him in the corridors anymore, let alone talk to him when they didn’t have to.

“Ah,” he says. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Jeno waves a hand. “It’s whatever,” he says, passing Renjun a sheet that he recognizes as one of Qian’s homework assignments. “We’re here to do math, right? Not talk about my dead mom. So here’s some math for you.”

And Renjun doesn’t know why he feels betrayed that he didn’t know, and annoyed at Jeno’s changing of the subject. But, he supposes, things would always be weird when it came to Jeno. After all, how were you supposed to navigate the line between total stranger and former childhood friend without it being weird?

 

“It doesn’t make sense!” Renjun says suddenly, glaring at the textbook as if it had personally wronged him.

Outbursts aren’t uncommon for Renjun. He thinks out loud a lot, especially, Jaemin thinks, when something is especially difficult. But Jaemin feels obligated to stop trying to smoke out of the window and ask, “What’s up?”

Renjun sighs. “I’m tutoring Lee Jeno, right? In stats. And it doesn’t make sense. I’ve tutored people before, and there’s always a point of understanding—a point where they stop understanding, but there’s always some kind of basic level, or a couple things they get right, or whatever—but there’s nothing here to even suggest that he got the answer right out of _luck_.”

“I don’t get it,” Jaemin says.

“I mean, when you do a multiple choice paper and you’re completely lost, generally you pick up a couple marks out of just being lucky and shading in the right answer. Because you have a one in four chance of getting it right,” Renjun says. “But this? It’s like—it reads like Jeno _knows_ how to do it, and does everything wrong.”

“Murphy’s law,” Jaemin says. “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

“Murphy’s law was formulated to lead to more efficient defensive design practices to account for worst-case scenarios,” Renjun says. “It’s not a life philosophy.”

“Buzzkill,” Jaemin tells him, putting out his cigarette and tossing the butt out of the window. “Has anyone ever told you you’re cute when you do your whole smart person thing?”

Renjun glares at him. “Don’t be like that,” he says. “Anyway, I swear—this doesn’t make sense. It’s like, you’d have to have slept through not only Qian’s lessons on stats but also _every other math lesson you’d ever had_ to have this little knowledge. And Jeno was _good_ at math when we were kids.”

“You knew Jeno as a kid?” Jaemin says. “Damn, this place really is suburban and sleepy. Everyone is childhood friends with everyone.”

Renjun rolls his eyes. “I doubt any place you ever lived in was any better,” he says. “I did know him as a kid. We were pretty close, actually.”

“Damn,” Jaemin repeats. “And now he’s _him_ , and you’re _you_. One of the three shining same-named stars of this ever-so-esteemed high school.”

“Shut up,” Renjun says. His eyes widen suddenly. “Oh my God, I just remembered something. I don’t know how we all forgot.” Jaemin frowns at him. “When we were in middle school, they made us do this standardized test. It was supposed to tell us our raw ability, and predict what subjects we’d be good at.”

“I’m guessing you got the highest mark in your middle school class?” Jaemin asks.

“No,” Renjun says. “ _Jeno did_.” 

Jaemin stares at him blankly. “I sit next to him in world history,” he says. “I always figured he was just, like, a dumbass.”

“He’s not,” Renjun says. “No—he’s not stupid. He just wants to seem like it. Because—”

“Oh my God,” Jaemin says. “It’s because he doesn’t want to be associated with people like _you_.”

“No it’s not!” Renjun protests. But then his face falls. “You might actually be right. Donghyuck and Mark aren’t the type to string along a third person who could outdo them in anything.” He lowers his voice. “Mark failed fourth grade.”

“Tragic,” Jaemin says. “I always figured he was like the addition to the group, right? Like, he always pretends to be blindly following the other two, but I see things. First day of class, Song told Mark to go see a counselor and I saw him trying to pretend he didn’t find it funny. He’s not subtle.”

“Or maybe our school are just terrible at observing things,” Renjun says idly. “People take other people at face value. Not everyone spends their time looking for things to criticize like you do, Jaemin.”

“You’re right,” Jaemin says. “My observational skills are envied by many. Maybe _I’m_ the one who’s cute when I do my smart person thing.”

Renjun sighs and drums his pen against the table. “I feel bad for him,” he says. “Jeno, I mean.”

“I don’t,” Jaemin says. Renjun frowns at him. “Life is too short to feel bad for affected smart people who think playing dumb is edgy or unique or whatever.” He leans against the wall, eyes shut. “School is _hard_. And those of us who are actually struggling don’t get any support because people think we’re just trying to be edgy, or that we want to stand out, when it’s _humiliating_ to do badly in school. Someone like Jeno who does badly on purpose will never understand that.”

Jaemin opens his eyes. Renjun’s mouth is slightly parted in shock, his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “I—” he begins, clearly taken aback, and Jaemin almost feels bad about ranting. (That’s a lie. He does. He feels like he’s broken one of the cardinal rules that keeps their weird semi-friendship from becoming something too close to permanent.) “I can tutor you too, if you want?”

Jaemin laughs. “Renjun, it’s fine,” he says. “I don’t need your help. I just don’t think you should feel sorry for people who _can_ achieve, but choose not to.”

“Maybe,” Renjun says, but Jaemin can tell he doesn’t agree with him. “I think he’s worried, you know? About how people will react to him, about how people will think of him.”

And Jaemin thinks back to two years ago, looking into his file when his social worker wasn’t in the room and reading the notes about the family that had just let him go. _Troubled, bad influence on a child, want to let go before baby is born_. And he thinks about how that word, _troubled_ , had stuck with him—how it hadn’t applied then, but he’d made it work, he’d made it apply—out of pettiness or fear, he didn’t know. All he remembered was thinking that, if that was what people were going to think of him, he was going to be in control of it. 

“Don’t we all?” he says. “Don’t we all care what people think about us?”

“I don’t,” Renjun says. He frowns. “I would have thought you, of all people, wouldn’t either. You always act like you don’t care what people think, like you aim to defy expectation at all cost.”

“Defying expectation doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to expectation,” Jaemin says quietly. He feels like he’s just been turned inside out under Renjun’s watchful eye, and it’s a disconcerting feeling because Jaemin is normally the one to do that to other people. It’s Jaemin’s signature move, to observe the facts about someone that they refuse to acknowledge themselves—that doesn’t mean Renjun has a right to do it to him.

“I can’t figure you out,” Renjun murmurs quietly, in a tone that suggests he wants to, in a tone that Jaemin doesn’t want to think of the reasoning behind.

“Good,” Jaemin says. “Keep it that way.”


	2. the heart is a muscle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> high school sucks and nobody is aware of their own feelings: the chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh so here is chapter two!
> 
> thanks a lot to kaya for encouraging me to get the last third of it done, and also to varsha for inspiring me to actually work on it (shameless plug: read [magnolia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764274/chapters/34142846) its a godsend and my biggest inspiration atm).
> 
> a couple warnings! there’s references to underage drinking around about a scene into the chapter but nothing particularly graphic. there’s a description of a panic attack around a third in starting at “october seventeenth...” and ending at “...fresh air”.
> 
> chapter title is from [the heart is a muscle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5OpvDdVtYU) by gang of youths.

Jeno, Renjun thinks, has completely mastered the dumb act.

That is, if it is an act. Jeno’s glaring at the homework sheet as if he understands nothing, idly doodling on the corner of the page as he punches numbers into his calculator. “I don’t get it,” he says finally.

Renjun tilts the page towards himself, looking at the answer. It’s wrong—but, then again, he hadn’t expected anything. “How did you get here?” he asks. (Now is as good a time as any to test his hypothesis, he thinks.)

Jeno swallows. “Don’t know,” he says curtly. 

“I can’t help if I don’t know what you’re doing wrong,” Renjun prompts. Jeno glares at him. Renjun doesn’t back down. “Okay. Question two. Go through it step by step and show me every step.”

Jeno picks up his calculator. “Okay,” he says, his eyes shifting as he punches in the numbers. Renjun watches him closely—watching his hesitation, how his fingers trace over the correct buttons before crossing to the other side of the calculator, how he punches in a nine instead of an eight. “First step. How am I doing?”

“I think you’re doing fine,” Renjun says. “I think you know exactly how to do this, Jeno, and you know exactly how you’re doing as well.”

Jeno stiffens. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says curtly. “I have a C- in statistics, in case you didn’t know that.”

“You do,” Renjun says. “But that’s not what you should be getting.” He looks Jeno in the eye. “You’re not actually as dumb as you want everyone to think you are, are you?”

Jeno swallows. Renjun sees him tensing in front of his eyes like a time-lapse video—the way his jaw clenches, his back straightens, his eyes fire up. “Are you really giving me the speech about my potential?” he asks. “Did Qian put you up to this or something?”

“When we were kids,” Renjun begins. “You were really smart, Jeno. Better than me. I don’t believe that you’ve fallen this hard.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jeno says. “You’ve been smart throughout your life, Renjun.” He pushes the paper away. “This is what I’m getting, okay? Whether you like it or not, whether you or Qian or anyone think I can do better—this is what I want. I didn’t even _want_ a tutor.”

“You didn’t want a tutor because you knew you’d be found out,” Renjun says. 

“Okay, genius,” Jeno says. “You’ve been fine since we did those standardized tests in middle school, huh? And you don’t believe I could possibly be not doing fine?”

“Things _haven’t_ been easy for me!” Renjun says, throwing his hands up in the air. “I haven’t gone through high school like a breeze—things have been _difficult_ , and classes are _hard_ , and I have to _work really hard_ to get to where I am! But at least I’m working to my full potential!”

“Fuck you,” Jeno says. “You don’t know anything about me, Renjun. You’re not—you don’t know—”

“You go through the steps of the work,” Renjun says. “And you get every step wrong. _On purpose_. I can see you doing it in your head, Jeno—you don’t have to pretend to be dumb if you can actually do this!”

“Get out of my fucking room,” Jeno says. He takes the homework sheet, rolls it into a ball, and throws it into the trashcan. “I’ll tell Qian that my tutor threw away my homework.”

 

Jaemin doesn’t know why he’s here, if he’s being totally honest.

Okay, so, a part of him does. But he’s been here for ten minutes, floating in and out of rooms avoiding everyone, and the reason doesn’t seem to have shown up, so there’s really no point of him being here. At all.

But there he is, in the kitchen of Lee Donghyuck’s house, drinking out of a plastic cup and glaring at the tiles. 

By the looks of it, everyone at SM High is there today, partaking in such rites of passage as bathroom makeout sessions and underage drinking. Jaemin turns on his phone, realizes that he doesn’t have the number he wants saved (god, why didn’t he have his number?) and closes it again, taking another sip from his cup.

Inside the house, he can hear music—something with a deep bass being played from a Spotify playlist on Mark’s laptop. The thought of going in there is hilarious to him—the thought of being surrounded by sweaty teenagers struggling to copy nightclub dance moves, listening to Drake and getting drunk off of cheap beer could not be less appealing if it tried. 

These have never been Jaemin’s thing. He should probably get going. If he made it home around about now he could avoid having to answer questions about where he’s been from his overly excitable foster siblings.

The kitchen door swings open. Jaemin tries to make himself look less like an idiot, standing alone in the kitchen nursing a drink by himself. “Greetings,” he says sarcastically, pushing the drawl into his voice. It’s become a part of him at this point.

Lee Jeno nods at him. “Hey,” he says quietly, half-closing the door behind him; it stays there, ajar, with the muffled sound of Mark’s playlist filling the room. “If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me.”

“You on your way out?” Jaemin asks, surprised. “Figured someone like you would love these things.”

“You figured wrong,” Jeno says. He laughs, clearly a little tipsy. “Always sneak out of these things early. Nobody really notices—everyone just assumes I’m in a different room and nobody cares enough to look for me.”

“I’m sure some people do,” Jaemin says. “You never been asked to dance at a party or something?”

Jeno shrugs. “Probably some people wanted to ask, but they’ve never managed to get hold of me,” he says. “It’s not like—I don’t walk through the room and immediately get mobbed by high school girls who think I’m attractive.”

“Surprised you’re not dating someone, to be honest,” Jaemin drawls, and for once he’s not sure how sincere he means it. Jeno gives him a shocked look, his eyes widening slightly. “Nobody’s told you you’re cute before?”

“They have,” Jeno says. “But nobody like—” He beckons vaguely to Jaemin, looking him up and down thoughtfully. “Nobody like you has.”

“Nobody like me?” Jaemin says. “So, do you mean, you’ve never had a delinquent call you attractive before, or—”

“A guy,” Jeno clarifies. He laughs nervously. “Not that I’d _want_ a guy to—to think I’m handsome, it’s just—”

“You’re not gay and neither is anyone else in this school, I get it,” Jaemin says, laughing despite himself. (He blames the beer. Jeno isn’t the type of person who’d get laughs out of him otherwise.) “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you don’t mind it.”

“I—” Jeno begins. “I don’t _want_ people to think I’m good-looking. No matter the gender.”

“Woe be with you,” Jaemin says. “Blessed with a good face. Your life is so hard. Thank you for sharing your struggle.”

“You’re one to talk,” Jeno says. “I mean—you—I just—”

“Cute,” Jaemin comments. Jeno flushes deeply. “It’s okay if you think a guy has a decent face. Doesn’t make you gay unless you wanna kiss him too.”

The door swings open. Jeno steps away, panic flashing across his face, as a couple walk in. The guy is in Jaemin’s world history class; he doesn’t recognize the girl, but there’s a tightness to her face that makes him instantly dislike her. “Uh, are you guys having a conversation or something?” he says gruffly. 

Jeno looks at Jaemin, and his face is unreadable. The girl starts texting on her phone, lips pursed, looking Jaemin up and down. “I—” he begins, his voice dropping a step quieter. 

“I was just on my way out, actually,” Jaemin says smoothly. “See you around, Jeno,” he adds, and then turns to the couple and says, “I don’t know either of your names. Don’t drink and drive.”

He thinks he’s imagining the way Jeno’s lips quirk upwards as he leaves, but for some reason the thought of it sticks in his mind. 

 

There’s really no way Jeno can sneak out now, he thinks glumly to himself, slipping back into Donghyuck’s living room and smiling as he makes eye contact with people. Donghyuck’s outdone himself with this one, inviting everyone he knows from every school in the area and adding that plus ones are okay for every guest. 

The result: a totally crowded house, and far too much alcohol for the legal limits. Not that the sum was a lot, seeing as everybody here was underage. Jeno would never say it, but he hates these things.

He finds a spot in the back, hopes he can blend in, and tries not to make it obvious that he’s uncomfortable. He could sneak out in twenty minutes—give Jaehyun and Yiyang enough time to move out of the kitchen and to let Jeno go out the back door. Nobody needed to even notice him. It would be like he’d disappeared—just as he liked it.

“Jeno?”

_Damn_ , he thinks to himself ruefully. Clearly, he wasn’t as invisible as he’d hoped he was. “Hey,” he says, trying to place the face of the girl who’d approached him—Hana? Hyerin? No, Hina—she was in one of his classes the year before, but had gone onto honors classes that Jeno didn’t want to go anywhere near. “What’s up?”

“I was just wondering,” she says, looking down at the floor towards her hands. She’s clearly nervous—her hands are shaking slightly. “My friends—they said I should come up here and talk to you—it’s just—I just—”

“What is it?” Jeno asks. “Say it. I don’t bite.” 

“I have a—a crush on you,” Hina says. Jeno’s eyes widen. She steps away. “Oh. You don’t—you don’t want me to say that, right?”

“Hina,” Jeno says. “It’s—it’s not a problem with you, I’m just not interested.”

“I guess Yiyang was right,” Hina says to herself. “I was hoping, but. It’s okay. I’m not—well, I’m kind of upset, but I—you can—yeah, it’s fine.” She smiles at him, but Jeno can see she’s not happy. 

Something sorts itself in Jeno’s mind. “What did Yiyang say?” he asks warily. 

“She said she—it doesn’t matter, you already know so there’s no need for me to tell you about your own relationships.”

Jeno’s heart rate rises. “I’m not _in_ a relationship,” he says, but it falls on deaf ears as Hina walks away, staring downtrodden at the ground. He takes out his phone and checks it, hands shaking as he unlocks it to read through his messages.

_heard smth weird from jungyeon,_ says Donghyuck’s last message to the trio’s group chat. Jeno almost opens it, but something tells him not to—something tells him to get out and go home and ignore the world until Monday.

If it’s what Jeno thinks it is—if everything had lined up so horribly solely to screw Jeno over—then the fact that it’s already reached Jungyeon means that it’s over for him. And his rejection of Hina would only— _no_. It wasn’t that. She’d probably—what was it that Jaemin had said? _Surprised you’re not dating someone._ That had to just be it. It had to be.

October seventeenth, 11:35 pm, at Lee Donghyuck’s empty townhouse for his second party of the school year. This is the scene, he thinks, where Lee Jeno’s life gets flipped upside down with nothing to do about it. He knows it. No amount of rationalization can explain the horror he feels, the premonition to the end of his life. There’s a chill going down his back, goosebumps up and down his spine, and his heart thunders in his throat. He can’t think, can’t move, can’t _breathe_.

_Calm down, Jeno_ , he thinks. _Don’t do this shit at Donghyuck’s party._

He’d been at a family dinner one time, shoved into the spare room with the TV with his many cousins, and they’d been cracking icebreakers to pass the time. Jeno had been on his phone, ignoring them, but he remembered one of them: _if you could know the way you were going to die, would you take it?_ He remembers his cousin Hansol, laughing, giving his answer: _I don’t think I would ever want to be prepared for something like that_.

Well, Jeno wanted to be prepared. If dying felt like this, like a weight pressing down on his chest and blocking his lungs, he wanted to know exactly how it happened. And he wanted to be ready for it.

_Breathe in, four seconds. Hold, seven seconds. Breathe out, eight seconds. Repeat four times._

Breathe in, two seconds. Don’t hold it at all. Regulate your breathing as you cross the room and leave the house to get some fresh air.

He unlocks his phone, opens the group chat with shaking hands, and the life in him stammers to a full stop.

 

**hyuck 11:35**  
is it true jeno and that new kid have something going on

**hyuck 11:35**  
jaemin or whatever his name is

**hyuck 11:35**  
heard smth weird from jungyeon

 

The air at school is strange, come Monday.

Renjun vaguely registers that there’d been a party that weekend at Donghyuck’s. He’d gotten the mass text like the rest of the school and promptly ignored it, going back to his homework because it wasn’t like there was ever anything in the world that made him willing to go to those things.

After parties, things are always odd—someone hooked up with someone else, someone cheated on someone else, someone got a bit too drunk and made a fool of themselves. And Renjun would hear the titters in the corridors, and the quiet inside jokes murmured from one person to another; never understanding and not wanting to. 

But there’s never this level of somber hanging around, a dark storm cloud seeming to have descended on the school, and Renjun wonders what had happened this time. Two years ago, one of the seniors had thrown a party that had led to the police showing up and shutting it down, and that had been met with jokes and laughs come Monday. Renjun’s not sure what could be worse.

“Here was me thinking he was just picky,” Eunji says to Sungkyung in government, leaning over Renjun to talk to her because he was seated in between them. (He was starting to think Jung had intentionally drawn up the seating plan to make Renjun feel as awkward as possible.) “But no. That was never it.”

“Am I wrong to feel kind of betrayed?” Sungkyung asks. They both giggle. Renjun scowls and continues taking notes from the textbook. “I mean. He’s too good looking to not be on the market.”

So someone was dating someone. Renjun still didn’t know why it was such a big deal, but just as he’s about to raise his head and ask for details, Jung looks up and says, “Miss Ko, Miss Kim, please stop talking and go back to taking notes.”

It’s only at lunch, when he makes his way to the quiet classroom at the back of the school, that he finds out.

Jaemin nods at him when he sees him, perched as always on the desk closest to the window. “Did you hear?” he asks, a smile playing across his lips. “Me and Lee Jeno are apparently together.”

Renjun squints at him. “You and _Jeno_?” he asks.

“It was a surprise to me, as well,” Jaemin says. “Herin—my foster sister, she’s a freshman—told me this morning that she heard from Yizhuo who heard from Hyunjin who heard from Heejin who heard from Chaewon who heard from Jiwoo who heard from Jungyeon that Jeno rejected Hina because he’s dating me.”

“Jesus,” says Renjun. It all makes sense, though—the insistence that the person was _off the market_ , the quietness in the school corridors, the fact that he’d seen Mark and Donghyuck without their third member earlier and thought nothing of it. “How did you remember all of that?”

“Figured I should know the story of my own relationship,” Jaemin says. “I’m disappointed, honestly. I do all of that work to make everyone shocked at my existence, and in the end people are most scandalized by a rumour that wasn’t even started by me.”

“It’s not true, though, right?” Renjun says. And really, he doesn’t know why he cares—he doesn’t even know _if_ he cares. Frankly, he’s not even totally sure if he and Jaemin are friends. 

Jaemin looks at him silently for a few seconds, and for once he looks like something has surprised him. His gaze is harsh, bold—Renjun feels small under it, and a flush rises in his face without him even being aware of it. “Why do you want to know?” he asks.

The silence is stifling. Renjun doesn’t know if he’s ever felt this strangely around Jaemin, this awkward and confused with no idea how to react or what to say. “I don’t know,” he answers. “We’re friends, right?”

Jaemin grins at him. The spell is broken. “Sure, if you wanna be.” He drums his fingers on the desk. “We aren’t actually together, for the record. I’m still an eligible bachelor. No matter how flattering it is that people think Jeno and I could plausibly be a couple.”

Renjun hums. “I don’t think it’s plausible,” he says, but he’s not sure what triggers him to say it. “People are just starved for drama in this school.”

Jaemin looks at him strangely again—all the illegibility and none of the force as the stare he’d fixed on him earlier. “Sure,” he says finally. “That makes total sense.”

 

The Thursday after, and Jeno hasn’t spoken to him since the party.

In hindsight, it makes total sense. Jaemin’s whole life was a plea for attention, a provocation, goading anyone and everyone into a reaction. Jeno was quiet, conforming, caring about his reputation and the expectations that surround him. Where Jaemin burns bridges, Jeno builds them. And now, Jaemin supposes, the cement had worn away and the bridges had collapsed on their own.

(That, or, Jaemin had taken a lighter and personally set fire to every one of them. He’d always been intrigued by arson, after all.)

The only interaction they’d had was a brief eye contact in world history on Monday—something that had resulted in quiet titters and Jeno’s fists clenching on his desk. He’d spotted Jeno quietly asking Song to move his seat after the lesson, and by Tuesday he had a different person sitting next to him, a girl who relished in giving him death glares.

That’s why he’s so surprised when there’s a knock on the doorframe of the classroom that Jaemin had started to regard as his. Well, his and Renjun’s. Being in the room felt like something separate from the world around him, and it was easy to forget that Jaemin was still at school and could still be easily found when he’s staring at Renjun while pretending to scroll through his phone.

Renjun looks up from his books. Jaemin hopes he was thinking something similar, that Jaemin wasn’t alone in seeing this classroom as a sanctuary. It would be pretty damn sad if Jaemin was the only one who placed any importance in their friendship, in their shared classroom.

He’s especially surprised when the knock turns out to be none other than Jeno. “Hi,” he says quietly, almost inaudible.

Jaemin nods, smiling thinly at him. “Hey.”

Jeno swallows. He gets the sense that Jeno has rehearsed this, that he’d walked up and down the corridor trying to decide whether it was a good idea. “Sorry if I’m disturbing you,” he says. “I just—I was looking for you. I’ve got something I want to say.”

In the corner of his eye, Jaemin sees Renjun push his books away and stare at the scene with increased suspicion. “Spit it out,” he says.

“I wanted to apologize for all this,” Jeno says. “This whole—people thinking we’re together, or that we hooked up, or whatever—I’m sorry if it caused you any trouble. Or embarrassment, or whatever—I just—yeah.”

Jaemin laughs. He doesn’t mean to, but it comes out of him involuntarily. Jeno’s face falls. “Oh,” he says. “I’ll just—I’ll just go—”

“No,” Jaemin says. “I’m—not laughing at you, I’m laughing at—at everything, really. The whole situation.” He shakes his head. “It’s really not embarrassing to me that people think I’m your type, Jeno.”

Jeno swallows. “It’s not that,” he says quietly. 

“I’m not in the closet either, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jaemin adds. “Seriously. Don’t worry about it. If you’re upset, whatever, that’s your right. You’re valid. But it doesn’t bother me. Only thing that bothers me about the whole situation is that everyone is so scandalized by me and it’s not even because of something I did. So unless you want to ask me out for real—which, to be honest, I would have no qualms about—or to ask me to pretend to be your boyfriend or something if that would make shit easier for you, I don’t think there’s anything left for you to say.”

The corners of Jeno’s lips quirk upwards. “Oh,” he says softly. “Okay.”

He turns around as if to leave the room, and Jaemin thinks about the handful of times he’s seen Jeno in the last few days. Alone, silent, uncomfortable. He almost wants to ask Jeno to stay, but then he glances at Renjun who’s returned to his books and decides that he’ll say nothing. Renjun looks up. Their eyes meet, and Jaemin wishes he could have a silent conversation with Renjun, wishes he could ask the question he doesn’t want to voice in words.

Renjun speaks. “Jeno,” he says. Jeno turns around. A silence falls upon the room, before he says, “So, Qian. Dead dog or separated wife?” 

It’s a painfully neutral question—something without much meaning attached to it. But Jaemin recognizes it for what it is—a peace offering, an olive branch, an invitation to stay in their sanctuary if he needs it.

Surprise flashes across Jeno’s face, and then it settles into a smile—nervous, uncertain, but a smile nonetheless. “Dead dog,” he says, stepping back into the room. “I’m pretty sure the girl he had in the photos on his desk last year was his sister, not his wife. Also, there’s no reason why the picture of his dog would disappear if he broke up with his wife.”

“Unless the wife took the dog,” Renjun says. He’s smiling softly, too, and pushes away his textbook to continue the conversation. Jaemin shakes his head and looks back out of the window, something uncertain blossoming in his chest.

 

“Are you alright, Jeno?” 

For once in his life, Jeno is sitting down and having dinner with his family. Or, well, his father and his stepmother. They’d insisted, and a part of Jeno had thought _why not?_ Everything else was changing—Donghyuck and Mark were avoiding him, he’d had a far too long conversation with Renjun, and the entirety of SM High thought he was gay.

There were the people who gave him tight smiles, impossibly awkward, simultaneously a kind gesture and a warning sign. _You can do your thing, but don’t bring me into it_. There were the people who averted their eyes when he passed them, who whispered to their friends when they caught a glimpse of him. And then there was another brand of people—the people who were starting to look at Jeno as some kind of martyr. Kim Yerim had stopped him to call him _brave_ yesterday. He didn’t feel brave. 

“I’m fine,” he says, nodding at Soonkyu without smiling. “It’s just been a long week, right?”

“Hm,” Soonkyu says. “My friend Luna says you’ve been having a hard time. Something about a boy?” 

Jeno’s blood runs cold. It was one thing for those rumours to stay at school, and another for him to bring them home, not knowing how anyone would react. He’d never spoken to his dad about _gay stuff_ , and his dad had never mentioned it either. What if he was violently homophobic? What if he would shake his head and turn away, not disowning Jeno but not acknowledging him either?

Jeno hadn’t realized until that moment how much he’d taken his father’s attempts at connecting with him for granted—how much he’d gotten used to his constant trying to get Jeno to talk to him and acknowledge him. He wasn’t sure what he’d do without that constant annoyance, that comforting exasperation. 

“It’s nothing,” Jeno says. “Just some weird rumours going around.” He grimaces at his plate, no longer hungry. 

His father looks at him. “Are you being bullied or something?” he asks, concerned. 

“It’s nothing like that,” Jeno insists. “I don’t really have an appetite, Soonkyu. I’m going to my room.”

His father shakes his head. “Tell me what’s going on,” he says. His tone is commanding, but his face is despairing, a cry for Jeno to treat him like his father and not like a stranger. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“It’s not fear,” Jeno says. “It’s just unimportant. I’m not even upset about it.”

His father looks to Soonkyu, who shrugs. “If Jeno doesn’t want to talk about it, I’ll drop it,” she says. “It’s his story to tell.” But she looks at Jeno expectantly, as if she wants him to say it, and Jeno finds himself once again at a loss for words. How are you supposed to react to this situation? Laugh it off and pretend it doesn’t matter?

“Fine,” he says. “People at school think I’m gay.”

“Are you?” his father asks. His face is unreadable.

Jeno winces. “Would you be mad if I said I was?” he says.

His father’s eyes widen. “No way,” he says. “No, Jeno—you’re my son, you know? I’m—no, it doesn’t matter to me.” He nods awkwardly. “I want you to be happy.”

“Then I’m gay,” Jeno says. He’s hit suddenly with the realization that he’s never said it out loud, never let himself think about it in those words. All the years of thinking _maybe I like guys_ , cycling through words never letting his mind go to that place. “Can I leave the table now?”

And it’s like nothing changed, and the stars realign back to normal. Soonkyu shares an exasperated look with his dad. Perhaps this doesn’t need to be a life-changing realization. 

 

Really, Renjun doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

He expects Donghyuck to look more like normal Donghyuck—straight posture, cool expression, the off-handed nature of someone painfully unaware of their own shortcomings. But Donghyuck looks like his world has been thrown off its axis. Perhaps Jeno wasn’t the only one affected by the rumors. 

They’re in an empty classroom after the only class that they share, and Renjun didn’t mean to corner him until they’re alone. And then he can’t stop himself from speaking.

Jeno’s become a bit of a staple of their classroom. It’s been two weeks since what he calls _the party from hell_ , and Renjun thinks he could get used to Jeno the same way he got used to Jaemin. Their dynamic hasn’t changed much. (Renjun can’t help but to notice the lingering glances Jaemin shoots Jeno. He doesn’t know how they make him feel.)

“What’s up with you and Jeno?” he says, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Donghyuck shrugs. “He doesn’t hang out with us anymore,” he says, but he looks guilty about it, glancing at the ground like he’s unsettled by it. “We tried. He just seemed like he was a world away ever since my last party.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t blame him. People around here are mean.”

“ _You’re_ mean,” Renjun says. 

Donghyuck shrugs again. “It’s different when it happens to someone you actually _like_ ,” he says. “Jeno isn’t—it’s not the same. He doesn’t want to be around us any more than we do. It’s like he just snapped and suddenly he’s a different person. Me and Mark don’t wanna go out of our way to fix that.” His eyes narrow. “Why do you care?”

“Because it feels disjointed,” Renjun says. _Because something in me cares about Jeno. Because Jeno looks like he’s been kicked lately and that’s really, really unsettling._

“I’m not—I’m not homophobic,” Donghyuck says. “Not at all. That’s—that’s not the problem.” He swallows. “Jeno and us—we’ve been falling apart as friends. I don’t know. He never really liked us, we could tell, but it didn’t matter then. He helped us out. But he doesn’t want to be around us now, I’m sure of it.” He laughs. “You and everyone else, who want to be holier-than-thou and act like you’re too good for high school politics—you think Mark and I are dumb. But we notice things. That’s why we’re so good at this being popular act.”

“Maybe,” Renjun says. He shrugs. “The first week of school, you promised me that you owe me a favour. For the whole forgery thing.” Donghyuck nods. “This is it. Clear it up for Jeno. Stop making people look at him and think _there goes the weird gay kid_. It shouldn’t be difficult. People at this school treat you and Mark like messiahs.”

Donghyuck shrugs. “I’ll try my best,” he says. “I’ve already tried telling people to back off, but they don’t believe me because I don’t know if the rumours are even true. Jeno hasn’t told me. Are they?” 

“Dunno,” Renjun says. “But I think you should say that they aren’t, and try to fix it. In the name of former friendships and all that.”

Donghyuck nods. “I’m not doing this for you, though. I’m doing this for Jeno.” He rolls his eyes. “Thanks for getting me back into my old mood, Huang. Also, you should probably consider why you care so much about this.”

Renjun doesn’t know what he means. He doesn’t want to think about it, either, because there’s an insinuation there that Renjun can’t—won’t let himself entertain. He can’t let his mind go there. It’s really, he thinks, not worth the trouble.

 

“Jeno’s sick,” Jaemin laments one day at lunch. It’s the first week of December, and things have started to ice over but the snow hasn’t yet begun to fall. It’s cold, and ugly, and Jaemin is seriously considering just taking the next week off. (He doesn’t like the cold. It makes him delirious.) “He wasn’t in world history. My life is pointless.” 

Renjun raises an eyebrow at him. “Why do you even care so much?” he asks. There’s a twinge of bitterness in his tone—or, perhaps, Jaemin is just imagining it. He does that a lot with the things Renjun says.

“I’m used to him now,” Jaemin says. “He’s kind of part of this room. It’s been three weeks since he started hanging around here, you know. And he’s odd—popular kids like him never seem to enjoy my company, for some reason, but I reckon he does. What do you think?” 

Renjun doesn’t answer—he just rolls his eyes and turns back to his work. Jaemin is seized (as he so often is) with the desire to grab hold of his attention for a little longer, to get Renjun’s eyes directed at him. In annoyance, in unwilling amusement, in something almost akin to fondness—Jaemin really doesn’t care.

God, he is so fucking gone. 

“I’d be worried about you too, if you were sick. But you never are. I’m pretty sure if you missed school the world would start to end,” he adds teasingly. 

Renjun rolls his eyes. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d think you cared,” he says, not looking up from his textbook. “Or do you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jaemin says. 

“Do you like him?” Renjun asks, finally looking up. His face is unreadable. Jaemin wishes it wasn’t so still, so normal—he wishes he could figure out what Renjun thought about the prospect.

He laughs instead. “Why? Would that bother you?”

“No,” Renjun says quickly. “No—that’s not it, it’s just—you’re both my friends. And if you like him then you should ask him out.” He turns back to his work, cheeks flushed, either exasperated or flustered. (Either way, Jaemin counts it as a win.)

“Perhaps you’re the one that cares too much,” Jaemin says.

“Perhaps,” Renjun says. “I had an interesting conversation with Donghyuck, you know. We both thought Donghyuck and Mark didn’t want anything to do with Jeno, but it’s the opposite. Jeno doesn’t want anything to do with them.”

“I sure do wonder why,” Jaemin says. 

“I’m saying Jeno’s more layered than you give him credit for,” Renjun says. “People aren’t just—people aren’t just what they are on the surface. Jeno’s more layered than we thought he was—and I think you are, too.”

Jaemin laughs. “Me?” he says. “Nah. What you see is what you get. But it’s cute that you think there’s more to me than crazy teenage delinquent.”

“You do care,” Renjun says. From his tone, Jaemin thinks, it seems like this is the first time Renjun has ever considered this prospect. “You care a lot more than you want any of us to think, but you do care.” 

“Present your thesis, then,” Jaemin says. “Assuming you wanna be all smart about it.”

“You were late to school once because you were bringing your foster brother’s lunch to his middle school,” Renjun says. Jaemin remembers that day. He’d been happy to let everyone assume he was dealing drugs or something like that, until Renjun had asked him and he’d been rendered completely incapable of talking to him. “You offered to pretend to be Jeno’s boyfriend if it would make things easier for him.”

“I didn’t realize you heard that,” Jaemin says.

“Well, I did,” Renjun says. “I don’t understand why you want people to think you don’t care, Jaemin."

“Remember when you said you couldn’t figure me out?” Renjun nods. “That’s how I like it. So stop trying, Renjun. There’s nothing there to figure out.”

“You’re kidding yourself if that’s what you think,” Renjun says.

“Perhaps,” Jaemin says. “But you know what you say: ignorance is bad, apathy is terrible, and both combined is the best state of mind you can be in.”

“Literally nobody has ever said that.”

Jaemin laughs. “Then I’m a trendsetter.” Renjun rolls his eyes and goes back to his work, and Jaemin thinks—hopes, for his sake and Renjun’s—that they were going to put this behind them. That they’d go back to their regular friendship. 

(That, perhaps, at some point, this would stop being a shitty, still model of a friendship. That Jaemin would stop being such a coward and tell Renjun everything he wanted to say to him.)

 

Jeno is in the supermarket down the street from his house, pushing a shopping cart as Soonkyu goes through her grocery list.

“It’s nice that you came out to help me with this, Jeno,” she says, smiling at him. For once, Jeno smiles back. “You never come out with me. I worry that you’re embarrassed of me or something.”

And yeah, Jeno was, and he’s really not sure what compelled him to volunteer to help Soonkyu with the groceries, but here he is. And it’s not the torturous experience he remembers it being, either. “Stuff changes,” he says. “I’ve got new friends, things have been so different at school, it’s whatever.”

Soonkyu laughs and moves into the cereal aisle. “I wish you weren’t so hostile to me before, Jeno,” she says. Jeno turns to her. “I know you didn’t like me because of your mom, but I never wanted to replace her. I just wanted you to trust me.”

“Oh,” Jeno says.

“I knew your mom, you know?” she says. Jeno shakes his head. “Yeah, I did. Not very well, but she was an amazing person from what I knew. And when your father asked me to marry him, I knew I could never replace her. I never wanted to be another replacement mom, Jeno.” 

“I—I’m sorry,” Jeno says. Because all his annoyed thoughts, all his rants, all his accusations fell short now with this being said. 

“Don’t be,” Soonkyu says. “You’re young, you lost your mom—I can’t imagine that at your age, Jeno, but you went through it.” She smiles ruefully. “And there’s something else, too.”

Jeno frowns. “What is it?”

“Sometimes in life,” Soonkyu says. “Sometimes you have something to say and you assume that everyone knows what you mean without having to state it when really, they don’t. And then it takes you a while to realize that perhaps it would be a good idea to just get up and say it.”

“I—I get that,” Jeno says. 

“it’s tough to figure out,” Soonkyu says. “Especially when it feels obvious. But it’s better to just say it. Saves having to deal with all those misunderstandings. And, in the end, when everything is out in the open, it’s a lot easier to finally be yourself.”

Soonkyu is still talking about being Jeno’s stepmother, but that’s not what Jeno’s thinking about right now. He’s thinking about school instead—about how Donghyuck had told everyone that Jeno wasn’t gay, how the rumours went up and down and around in circles. He’s thinking about what he felt when he heard about him and Jaemin—worry, fear, and a small part of him annoyed that he didn’t get the opportunity to say it. 

“You’re right,” he says. “And I just got an idea.”

 

Renjun didn’t normally go to the cafeteria, but that morning when he’d opened his locker for his government textbook a note had floated out—on lined paper, written quickly in blue ballpoint in what Renjun is fairly certain is Jeno’s handwriting.

_Come to the cafeteria at lunch instead,_ it says. _Gonna do something and I don’t wanna be alone for it._

It’s strangely ominous, but a part of Renjun warms at the implication that Jeno trusts him enough to insist that he goes. So when the bell rings for lunch, instead of going to the empty classroom, he heads to the cafeteria instead. 

He’s not surprised at all to see that Jaemin is there too—instead, he makes a beeline for him, tapping him on the shoulder. “So Jeno sent you a weirdly ominous note too, huh?”

“Nah, he told me in person on the way out of world history,” Jaemin says. Renjun doesn’t know why the fact that Jeno told Jaemin _in person_ makes his heart sink. It’s not quite that Jeno sees Jaemin more than Renjun does—but, at the same time, it’s not quite that Jaemin sees _Jeno_ more than Renjun does. “I’m looking for him. You wouldn’t happen to have any idea what he’s planning to do, do you?”

“I was hoping you did,” Renjun admits. Jaemin laughs and leans back. “This is one hell of a way to come back from the flu, huh?”

Jaemin laughs again. Renjun’s not sure if he ever made Jaemin laugh this much before, but he rather likes the idea that he’s laughing _because of Renjun_ —and not just his sardonic, semi-mocking laughter that Renjun cannot figure out. “Right,” he says. “For all we know, maybe he’s going to pay for a nice meal for us.”

Renjun pulls a face. “Right,” he says. “As if anything from the _school cafeteria_ counts as a _nice meal_.”

“I can dream,” Jaemin says. “Stop crushing my dreams, Huang Renjun.”

That’s when Jeno walks in, but it’s not quite Jeno. Or rather—it is, but he’s different. He holds himself differently, and there’s a determination in his eyes that neither of them have ever associated with Jeno. It takes Renjun a couple of seconds to realize this is what a confident version of Jeno looks like. It takes him a couple more seconds to realize that a confident version of Jeno is _attractive_.

“Okay,” he says, tapping on a glass—where the hell did Jeno get a _glass_? Remarkably enough, the cafeteria goes silent. Heads turn. People whisper. Jeno has an audience, and, to Renjun’s surprise, he isn’t turning away from it. This is what he _wanted_. Renjun shares a look of disbelief with Jaemin. 

Then he catches the way Jeno’s eyes look through the students and catch on Renjun and Jaemin, and Renjun realizes why Jeno wanted them to be here. Whatever Jeno was planning on doing, it _scared_ him. He offers a thumbs up. 

“So I have something to say. There’s been a lot of shit going around lately about whoever I might be hooking up with, or whatever my sexual orientation is, and first of all I wanna ask why the hell all of you care so much.” Jaemin laughs at that. A couple others do. Jeno grins. 

“But that’s not the important part. I had a conversation this weekend with my stepmother and she said something along the lines of that sometimes you have to state things clearly because people won’t always get it, and because sometimes you wanna control how things are said. And there’s no point in letting people _figure out_ who you are and what you stand for, because it’s easier when it’s out in the open.”

Renjun turns to look at Jaemin. He’s gaping, now, as if he can’t quite figure out what Jeno is doing but either way is completely shocked by it. Renjun has an idea.

“So I figured, if this is gonna get out at some point, it’s better if I’m the one who says it to everyone and not the SM High rumour mill or whatever,” Jeno continues. “So I’m gay. That’s all I wanted to say.” He sets down the glass and walks over to Jaemin and Renjun as the cafeteria explodes into conversation, several pairs of eyes turning to stare at him. If this was an action film, Jeno would be walking away from an exploding bomb right now. But this isn’t an action film, and the explosion is far more devastating, but Jeno is just as unbothered.

“I have something for you,” he says, opening his bag and taking out a stack of paper, dumping it on the table in front of Renjun. “It’s all the math stuff you tried to tutor me on. You were right, you know. There’s no point in me acting like I’m dumb just because that’s what people expect of me.”

Renjun flicks through them in disbelief. “That was—”

“—the most legendary thing I’ve ever seen,” Jaemin continues. “In twenty years, people will probably still be talking about Lee Jeno coming out in the school cafeteria. You’re _badass_.”

“I’m hungry is what I am,” Jeno says. But he’s smiling despite it, and Renjun smiles too (or perhaps he’s been smiling since Jeno walked in, perhaps he’d been smiling since Jeno finished his speech, perhaps it was hard _not_ to smile where Jeno was concerned), and he spots Jaemin smile too—something genuine this time, not an attempt at anything else. 

Something blooms in Renjun’s chest looking at the both of them. And, for once, he doesn’t try to repress it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!
> 
> this chapter was very jeno-centric but for a reason...at risk of giving anything away, jaemin and renjun's development is catalysed a lot by jeno and i needed to get to the near-end point of his arc to get a move on with theirs.
> 
> also thanks to loona for having such usable names when i ran out of smrookie girls halfway through the chapter, skskdkkdd
> 
> i should have the next chapter up soon but i cant make any promises because the next week is most likely going to be pretty hectic. 
> 
> thanks again for reading! i can be reached on [twitter](https://twitter.com/neosveIvet) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/970524_com) if you wanna ask me any questions or otherwise talk to me!


	3. a promise that will never fade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renjun bursts into laughter. Jaemin, ears red with flush, follows suit, laughing nervously. And Jeno follows, laughing loud and happy, and Renjun wonders absently to himself why the sound of the three of them laughing together feels so complete.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh its here!! this chapter is probably the longest i've ever written any single chapter of anything, and it was a lot of fun to write, so i hope it's a satisfying conclusion!
> 
> thanks as always to everyone who commented on the last two chapters, as well as varsha and kaya for writing the fics that made me finally get up and get this done. (daily reminder to read [magnolia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764274/chapters/34142846) and [twilight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14600121/chapters/33743553))
> 
> chapter title is from [dream lantern](https://open.spotify.com/track/5FrUxf3z2YVITqY6RoTBfv) by radwimps off the _your name_ soundtrack, which i listened to almost three times in full while writing the last third or so of this chapter. playlist for this chapter is [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/shahdiae/playlist/0vHUMBbqrQGZE0z8QcdKPS?si=VpMWHcm0TY-5ZXs1Lee4aw).

Jaemin was the type of person who enjoyed his own company.

Not out of any internal introversion, or shyness, or issues in his past leading to severe anti-social behavior. The last few years had been a whirlwind of new schools and new foster homes as Jaemin admittedly gave everyone he could the hardest time possible. 

But he’d been _here_ for so long—too long, actually, because he’d arrived in September and now it was December and his foster parents showed no sign of giving up on him as a lost cause anytime soon. And the problem with trying to live a solitary existence when you were Na Jaemin was that, in all honesty, Na Jaemin was not suited for a solitary existence. He got attached too easily—attached to boys with pretty smiles who had a knack for getting under his skin.

Hence why, for once in his life, he’d been accompanied on his trips skipping class. Why he’d led someone else to his spot under the bridge instead of going to class or finding it alone himself. Why he wasn’t alone right now, but instead in a series of back-and-forth banter exchanges that had lasted from the school grounds until the bridge.

“I’ve never skipped like this before,” Jeno says. “I’ve skipped, but like, never going too far from school grounds, you know?”

“It’s a lot easier to sneak out of school than to sneak into school,” Jaemin says. 

Jeno laughs. “You would know, huh?” he says, looking around. “This place is so quiet. I’d think more people would come around here.”

“It’s normally more busy after school finishes,” Jaemin says. “But when people skip school they generally want to go somewhere a bit more substantial. And easier to find.”

“It’s quite cool,” Jeno says, which is the last thing Jaemin expects. It’s dirty, and falling into disrepair. The walls are covered with graffiti; the floor is lined with cigarette butts and condoms. “Thanks for taking me here.”

And that’s the thing Jaemin had most hoped to not have to acknowledge—the way he’d intercepted Jeno in the corridors, told him to _live a little, Jeno, you’re no fun_ , and practically dragged him out with him. “I can’t believe you were planning on spending the class _on school grounds_ ,” he says. 

“Yeah, well,” Jeno says. “This is really irresponsible, you know. What if there’s a fire?”

“Wow, you are definitely spending way too much time with Renjun,” Jaemin says. “I’d bring him here too except if Huang Renjun skipped school I’m pretty sure the world would end.”

Jeno is giving him a knowing look that Jaemin can’t figure out, a twinkling smile that says _I know something you don’t know_. “You’re right about that,” he says, his smile widening into a grin. And then, “What’s up with you and Renjun?”

Jaemin’s heart speeds up. “Me and Renjun?” he says lightly. “I don’t—there’s nothing up, we’re just…whatever we are. Friends.”

“You’re dodging the question,” Jeno says, his smile widening slightly, and if Jaemin didn’t know better he’d say it was teasing. 

(Jaemin does know better, and he knows that’s not all that’s in that smile—it’s a little too wide, a little too professional. But he knows he’ll never understand Jeno fully; he doesn’t ask.)

“Maybe I am,” he says finally. 

“Why?” Jeno says. “Why are you always—you know. How you are.”

“Crippling abandonment issues,” Jaemin says coolly. He’s learned that telling the truth and framing it like a lie, like a callous statement thrown out on a whim, is a good way to get people off his back. At worst, he gets a lecture about how that’s _not something you should joke about, Jaemin_.

He doesn’t expect Jeno’s forehead to crease in concern. “Really?” he asks quietly. “Are—are you okay?”

Jaemin shrugs. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Don’t give me that look, Jeno—it’s not a big deal.” Jeno looks as if he wants to press further, to continue the conversation, or maybe just to give Jaemin a hug—and Jaemin is neither a _deep heart to heart conversation_ kind of guy or a _hug_ kind of guy. “How are you getting on?” he asks. “Nobody’s strongly recommended bible camp to you yet?”

“Nothing that harsh,” Jeno says. “It’s like—people think they’re doing great and they give themselves a nice pat on the back for being so nice to the crazy gay kid, because they aren’t telling me that I’m going to burn in hell but _that’s not the only way you can do something homophobic_ , you know?”

“I know,” Jaemin says.

“Suji asked me if I wanted to go _shopping with her_ ,” Jeno says. “We barely even _know each other_ , Jaemin.”

Jaemin gives Jeno a wry grimace. “Must feel like everything’s been turned upside down, huh?” he says.

Jeno glances at the ground. The conversation shifts in tone suddenly. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I made the right decision,” he says quietly, almost too quietly for Jaemin to catch. “I feel like everything changed when I made that decision to—to come out, and I feel like I have to be a totally different person because that’s what everyone’s looking at me like, and—” He trails off. “Yeah. Things are weird.”

Jaemin doesn’t _do this_. He’s not let himself get attached to anyone since middle school—he’s drawn lines in his head, walls made of iron to stop anyone from getting too close and making sure to put them up whenever things get too close. Jaemin isn’t the type of person who _reaches out_ , but Jeno’s face has fallen and his eyes look like they’re on the way to becoming teary and he can tell that this has been beating him up for the last couple of weeks.

Jaemin doesn’t _do this_. Ever. Except, apparently, when it comes to Lee Jeno, because he moves forward to wrap him into a hug.

“I don’t think this has to change anything about you,” he says quietly. “Because—because you’re still the same person. Just more true to yourself, I hope.” _Because you’re still the same person I became friends with_ , he thinks quietly to himself, but the thought of saying it out loud never crosses his mind. 

 

It had never occurred to Jeno that the stuff Renjun frantically works on, scribbling away in his notebook as if it’s the end of the world, isn’t schoolwork, until he walks over to ask if Renjun had ever taken chem and if he had any notes lying around from whenever he did it and Renjun frantically flips pages in the notebook.

The room falls into silence. It’s not like it was particularly loud before, but this is the kind of silence that Jeno is used to—something thick and cloying and claustrophobic. 

“What’s the panic for?” Jaemin asks—warily, as if he recognizes something in it. This isn’t something small, Jeno thinks. There’s something bigger happening that neither of them have ever noticed about Renjun, and Jeno suddenly feels stupid—for always being aware that Jaemin had some demons he didn’t mention, and for always thinking over his own, and for never noticing that Renjun must have something keeping his head down. 

Renjun laughs nervously. “It’s—it’s nothing,” he says. “Just—notes.”

“Study notes?” Jaemin asks, sharing a glance with Jeno. 

“No,” Renjun says. “It’s—it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.” He turns to Jeno and smiles weakly. “Was there something you wanted, Jeno?”

“I mean, now I want to know what you’re hiding so badly,” Jeno says. 

Renjun sighs. “I—are you guys ever going to leave me alone about it if I don’t tell you?”

“If you’re uncomfortable then yes,” Jeno says, at the same time as Jaemin responds with a resounding “Nope.”

Renjun laughs, but it doesn’t have any real happiness attached to it—a laugh forced out for the sake of laughing. “It’s not a big deal,” he says finally. “I’m just—I’ve wanted to write for a while, so I’m getting it out so it won’t be a distraction to me later, because I need to focus and stop getting distracted by shit like this, you know?”

Jaemin frowns. “You write—write what?”

“Different things,” Renjun says. He glances at the table, flushing. “Stories. Poetry, sometimes, if I feel up to it.” He hesitates for a second, then passes his notebook across the table. “You can look, if you want.”

Jeno feels his heart swell. Somehow, this little bit of information feels like a sacrifice. Jaemin never talks about himself, either, but he relays anecdotes in that drawl of his and says things flippantly like he expects Jeno not to believe them—and it’s enough, for Jeno, to feel a kind of closeness to him. But Renjun is more guarded, more closed-off, never sharing the slightest thing to either of them. 

Jaemin flips through the notebook. “I never knew you write,” he says, stopping on a page, and suddenly Jeno feels like he’s intruding.

“I don’t _write_ ,” Renjun says. “Like, not _regularly_ , like it’s something I do a lot—it’s just—a dumb hobby that won’t amount to anything. And I’m not even good, like, _at all_ , so I don’t tell people.”

“I think you’re good,” Jaemin says quietly. It’s surprisingly real and raw and _genuine_ , something sweet and unmarred. There’s no drawl, no tinge of sarcasm. 

Renjun’s eyes brighten up. “You do?” he says shyly. 

Jaemin nods. “I think you’re—it’s not dumb. You’re good.”

Renjun laughs quietly, taking his notebook back, as if he knows that this was going to be never spoken about like all the other elephants in the room that they deal with every day. “Thanks,” he says to Jaemin. 

Jeno ignores the feeling of _whatever it was_ in his chest. It doesn’t matter, he thinks. Renjun and Jaemin are obnoxiously obvious about their feelings for each other, and what Jeno thinks about that doesn’t matter to anyone. 

 

When the Skype call finally connects, the screen is so ridiculously grainy that Renjun thinks he might try his luck with the international data bills.

“What’s new with you, Huang Renjun?” Yukhei says through his computer screen, grinning and making what Renjun _thinks_ is a thumbs up. (He can’t be sure. Partly because of all the grain, and partly because Yukhei is exactly the type of person to flip him off over Skype for no reason.)

“A lot of shit, actually,” Renjun says. “You’ve missed so much, you know that? Like—the entire school day has been flipped upside down level of _much_.”

“Next time I go on exchange somewhere, I’ll tell my host family to get better wi-fi,” Yukhei says. It’s been impossible for them to have any kind of conversation in the last four months, because (as Yukhei describes it) “It takes about eight years for me to send _one_ WhatsApp message, let alone _call you_.” 

Renjun’s missed him. But at the same time, it’s been _okay_ , and that feels like a terrible thing to think because before September, Yukhei was kind of Renjun’s only friend. Despite them never talking before they’d started high school, when Yukhei was redoing freshman year because of some fiasco with his family—Yukhei was his best friend. And Renjun kind of felt like he’d replaced him.

“So, what’s new, scrub?” Yukhei asks. “You got any new friends, or are you just impossibly alone without me?”

Renjun huffs. “I do, actually,” he says. “This new guy, Jaemin, he’s—you’d like Jaemin. And Lee Jeno.”

“ _Lee Jeno_?” Yukhei says, moving closer to the camera. “Holy shit, Renjun, did he get disowned by Hyuck and Mark, or are you in with _that lot_ now?”

“You can’t say _that lot_ like you don’t have every person in our grade and the grade above us’s numbers,” Renjun says.

“Because I’m on the basketball team,” Yukhei says staunchly. “It’s totally different than being _in with them_.” 

“Well, I’m not,” Renjun says. “In with them. Jeno’s not—like that, anymore, if he ever really was. He came out and now he’s actually being a real person, not like—”

“Back up,” Yukhei says. “He _came out_?” Renjun hears the static-y sound that was unmistakably Yukhei’s laugh, loud as ever. “Man, when you said that I’d missed a lot over the last few months, you actually meant it, huh?”

“Do I ever exaggerate?” Renjun asks.

“Nope,” Yukhei says, grinning into the camera, and Renjun wonders how Yukhei could be so larger-than-life that he can visualize his crazy wide smile even with enough static on the screen to turn him into a blur of colours. “That’s why I like you so much, kid.”

“I’m a year younger than you,” Renjun says dryly.

“Still a kid,” Yukhei says. “You know, in Hong Kong, I can legally drink? Life is great and I have no more worries, little Huang.”

“You gonna move back there after graduation?” Renjun asks. 

“Maybe,” Yukhei says. “Didn’t realize how much I missed it, you know?” He smiles at Renjun, and adds, “It’s okay if I leave you, though, because you have _new friends_ now. Maybe by the time I get back, you’ll finally stop being such a homebody and _date_ someone.”

Renjun doesn’t even realize that he’s tensed, until Yukhei whoops through his headphones. “Do you, Renjun? And you haven’t _told me_?”

“I don’t,” Renjun says. “If I did, it would be the first thing I said to you when the call connected, and you know it.”

Yukhei grins. “But you like someone.”

Renjun flushes deeply. “Perhaps.”

Yukhei whoops again. “I will definitely interrogate you once I get back in January,” he says. “But the connection is too shit for me to get through _everything_ I wanna ask. And I want to meet him, and that’s not possible.”

“Yeah,” Renjun says. “About that.”

“What?” Yukhei asks. “Is this—is this someone you, like, met over the Internet or something? Or is he really shady? Does he sell drugs?”

“It’s not like that,” Renjun says.

“Oh?” Yukhei says. “So it’s not a him? I get it, sexuality is fluid and all—”

“It’s not that, either,” Renjun says. “It’s—nobody shady, and somebody male, but—it’s not—it’s not just one person.”

Yukhei’s mouth falls open. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, _Renjun_ , I have so much stuff to ask you about in January.”

 

Jaemin doesn’t want to make things awkward, he’s decided.

He’s done some thinking, over the last few days. Because that’s what Jaemin’s brain is for—to _think_. And he’s decided that maybe he _does_ like Renjun, maybe he’s liked Renjun since they started hanging around in each other’s orbit, and maybe he wants to do something about that but he’s too scared to make a move.

Jaemin has a list, actually. It’s in his head, but it’s stuck there behind his eyelids when he tries to talk to Renjun, every time he stops himself mid sentence because he’s halfway to a confession made of misplaced words and jumbled phrases. _Reasons why Renjun would definitely not say yes if you asked him out, and why he would definitely hate you if you ever asked._

Number one on the list, highlighted in neon yellow and underlined over and over again in his head, is that _Jaemin is too much_. He’s never forgotten those two words—too much, too _much_ what did that even _mean_?—over the last two years, ever since he opened up his file while his social worker was out of the room and saw them scrawled down in ballpoint. 

He’d been with the same family for a few years at that point, ever since he was nine, and suddenly he’d been out with no explanation on his way to another family. So he’d opened up his file and skimmed through the papers and found it written as a note. _Finally expecting a child. Thinks Jaemin is too much to handle + bad influence._

He’d never forgotten it, either, scrawled there in the ever-so-familiar handwriting of his social worker, in red ink. He’d taken one look at the note, put his file down, and decided that if that was what his foster parents apparently thought—that Jaemin at fourteen, who by all accounts was a perfectly nice young boy, was _too much_ and _a bad influence_ —Jaemin would just make it true. It wasn’t true then, but it sure as hell was now.

“Hey, Jaemin.”

Jaemin shakes himself out of his thoughts and nods at Renjun making his way into the classroom. He’d been here for a while, having skipped world history to hang out in here and think about his life. (It was really hard to lose himself in thinking about Renjun and whatever the fuck else he was feeling while also being hyperaware of Jeno just a few desks away. Not that he liked Jeno, or anything, or—fuck, Jaemin doesn’t know what the hell he’s feeling.)

“Salutations.”

Renjun rolls his eyes and goes to his normal spot, which was, Jaemin thought, a great way to lead into point number two on his imaginary list. Jaemin and Renjun were friends. Friends who never really spoke to each other about anything, but they were friends nonetheless. And Jaemin didn’t want to fuck up one of the only interpersonal relationships he’d had in the last three years by confessing love to him all of a sudden.

Because, you know. Somewhere along the line he’d started to care about Renjun. And he’d started to value their friendship. And he didn’t want to lose that for the purposes of some dumb crush.

“Hey,” he says suddenly. Renjun looks up, and _God_ , Jaemin just had to run his fucking mouth, huh? There was really no nice way out of this. Jaemin had done drama in middle school, back before his big life-changing moment in his social worker’s car, and he’d been absolute _shit_ at improv. “You look nice. Today. I mean.”

Jeno walked into the room, nodded at both of them. Renjun didn’t seem to notice. “Oh,” he says. “Thanks, I guess.”

Jaemin swallows. “Yeah.”

Jeno looks between them as if there’s something he’s trying to figure out. Jaemin hates it. Because now he has an audience for this shit, this absolute humiliation of telling a boy he’s pretty and being responded to by _thanks, I guess_. At least Jeno had responded better, back at that stupid party. 

Renjun sighs and shuts his notebook. “Jaemin,” he says, and then goes silent. “I—never mind.”

“Spit it out,” Jaemin says, grimacing. “I don’t bite.”

“If you’re flirting with me,” Renjun begins, and then glances at the table. Jeno edges away from the conversation. “If you’re flirting with me, stop. I don’t—I can’t date you. So—that’s not happening.”

“Oh,” Jaemin says. ( _What did I fucking tell you?_ says a voice in his head. _Next time, actually pay attention to your fucking mental lists, dumbass._ ) Then he grins, trying his hardest to play the part. _Middle school drama club_ , he thinks. _Get in character. Play the role._ “I thought I was irresistible, Renjun,” he says, throwing a wink in for good measure.

Renjun laughs airily. Another elephant in the room that would never be discussed, another dark cloud that they would go on to ignore—Jaemin’s stupid crush on stupid Huang Renjun who _can’t date him_. “Oh, of course,” he says. “God, I’m glad you weren’t serious about that stuff.” 

Jaemin laughs. Or, rather, tries to. It comes out more like someone saying a laugh, like a robot who’d been programmed to say “Ha ha ha” whenever anything funny happened—those wooden syllables, without any real mirth attached to them. “You know me,” he says, “always fucking around.”

He didn’t look away fast enough to not notice the glance of concern Renjun shoots Jeno, the look of understanding Jeno shoots back. He wishes he hadn’t seen it. Things are shitty enough without whatever the hell that was.

 

Really, Jeno was just here to get Renjun’s notes from last year.

He feels impossibly awkward standing in Renjun’s bedroom, because it hasn’t changed in layout since they were kids. There’s still the same bed, but with different sheets—still the same walls, but without the posters they’d put up. The same wardrobe, the same curtains, the same window overlooking the street. 

Renjun’s digging through a box he’d pulled out from under his bed, flicking through what looks like an absolute mess of tests and report cards and hand-written revision notes. Jeno had always assumed Renjun would be neater, but his desk is all haphazard papers and pens. “Here,” he says finally, passing him a stack of papers stapled together. “This is the only reason I passed chem. Everything you’ll need to know is on there. Choi is super predictable, she always examines the same kind of things, so—that’ll get you through.”

Jeno smiles at him softly. “Thanks,” he says.

“I’ll—I’ll show you out,” Renjun says. They rarely spend time together, just like this, just the two of them—generally, they’re either in absolute dead silence, or Jaemin is there, filling up the void with everything Jaemin is. It was awkward when they did—that was what they had, after all, a friendship built on the foundation of memories, memories that Jeno wasn’t even sure Renjun had. And, even if Renjun did have them, Jeno had no idea how he’d perceived them. 

They get about as far as the kitchen when Renjun is intercepted. Jeno remembers Mrs. Dong (née Huang), from when they were kid—tight-lipped and effortlessly terrifying. (They’d spent a lot of their time at Jeno’s place. Jeno’s mom had always seemed like a breeze in comparison.) But back when they’d been kids, those terrifying looks and sharp words had almost always been directed at Sicheng, Renjun’s cousin.

But now that Sicheng was at university, Jeno thinks, her eyes had suddenly found Renjun. Another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was Huang Renjun falls into place. “Renjun,” she says. “What’s happening?”

“I just wanted to give Jeno my chemistry notes from last year,” Renjun says. “You remember Jeno, right? We were friends way back then.”

“Ah, yes,” Mrs. Dong says. “Jeno. I’ve heard a lot of things about you, you know, from the other mothers on the SM High PTA. Not all of them are very nice, either.” Jeno feels like it’s a threat.

“Jeno had some bad friends,” Renjun says quickly. “But he’s fine, Auntie, he’s not a bad influence or anything like that. And I’m just giving him notes. No big deal.”

“Not about his friends,” Mrs. Dong says. “Something else. The love that dare not speak its name, and all that.” She laughs airily, but her eyes go between them, and Jeno _knows_ that look. He’s seen it so many times at school—the _I don’t care what your lifestyle is, just keep it away from me_. “I’m sure there’s nothing like that happening here, though.”

“I mean, yeah, I’m gay,” Jeno says, suddenly angry, suddenly incredibly annoyed that Renjun was raised by someone like _this_. Renjun glances at him. They meet eyes. _Should I shut up?_ he tries to add. The corners of Renjun’s mouth quirks up. _Carry on,_ his eyes seem to say. “There’s nothing wrong with that, though, Mrs. Dong, right? Love your neighbour and all that.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Dong says tightly. “Renjun? A word?” 

“Oh, should I leave?” Jeno asks.

Renjun glances between them, and suddenly his back straightens and a smile falls onto his mouth. “No,” he says. “You don’t have to. Auntie can just talk to me in the living room here.”

The door shuts. Suddenly, a barrel of voices flow out, muffled by the wood of the door. Jeno catches some words— _those people_ , and _my friend_ and _your father_. He wants to leave. 

But Renjun asked him to stay. So he doesn’t—he just tries to block out the discussion that has definitely escalated into an argument.

“I’m tired of you bringing up my father all the time!” yells Renjun suddenly, loud enough to be heard through the door. “I don’t want to be a dentist, I don’t want to find a nice girl and get married, I don’t want you to constantly be micromanaging me all the time!”

There’s a silence. Jeno can feel the awkwardness, the surge of emotions, even from where he stands. The tension is so thick that it could be cut with a knife. 

“This is a lot to take in,” he hears Mrs. Dong say.

“Am I getting disowned?” Renjun asks.

Mrs. Dong laughs. “No,” she says. “But I need some time to take all this in, Renjun, you can’t—you can’t expect me to just be okay with it just like that like—I feel like I don’t know who you are anymore.”

“I’m the same person,” Renjun says. “These are just—new things. Stuff you didn’t already know.” He sighs. “I’ll find somewhere else to stay for the next couple days. So you can get your thoughts together.”

The door opens. Jeno hopes they didn’t realize he was eavesdropping. “Did you hear what was said?” Renjun asks.

“Yeah,” Jeno says.

“Are you—can I—do you have the space?” Renjun asks. And suddenly more things fall into place. Jeno was the catalyst, he thinks, to this inevitable fallout between Renjun and his aunt—he was the final ingredient they needed to make it all blow up, to let Renjun say what needed to be said. It’s ridiculous.

But, Jeno thinks, he doesn’t mind ridiculous when it’s done right. 

“I do,” he says. “Besides, my dad loves you. Never seen anyone get so happy about their kid needing tutoring before.”

Renjun’s eyes twinkle slightly, and the corners of his lips quirk upwards, and Jeno catches Mrs. Dong’s eye without meaning to. Her expression is simultaneously confused and understanding, simultaneously both illuminating and impossible to read. “I’ll get some stuff,” he says.

He disappears up the stairs. Mrs. Dong sighs. “He’s a good kid,” she says. “I just need some time to reconcile all of this with what I thought I knew about my nephew, you know?”

Jeno doesn’t know. He shrugs, “My parents were pretty understanding, actually.”

Mrs. Dong laughs. “I don’t—I don’t think he’s a hell-bound abomination or anything. I just never met anyone like _that_ before, let alone have the first one I meet be my own nephew.”

Jeno shrugs. “Word of advice?” he says. “Renjun’s the same person he’s always been. Him liking boys, or being a good writer, or not wanting to go to dental school doesn’t mean that any of your memories of him are somehow changed, or that what you knew about him is somehow wrong. He’s still the same old Renjun. Sometimes, I think, out of all of us in the grade, he’s the one that’s truest to himself.”

Mrs. Dong looks at him with a smile. “You care a lot about him, huh?” she says. Jeno doesn’t like her tone. “Be careful with my nephew, Jeno.”

Renjun comes down the stairs just then, offering Jeno a small smile. “See you later, Auntie,” he says. And then, to Jeno, “What was that all about? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

“Nothing,” Jeno says. “Just, you know. Nothing.”

 

It doesn’t take long for Jeno to explain the situation to his dad and stepmother, and even less time for him to dig up the spare mattress from behind the closet. “This thing hasn’t been used in about five years,” he says.

“What?” Renjun says. “You’re telling me I’m the only person who ever crashed on this mattress? I’m honored.”

Jeno snorts. “Sure. An honor.” He takes his phone out from his pocket, adding, “If you want the bed instead, here’s your last chance to object.”

“What happens if I do object?” Renjun asks.

Jeno shrugs. “Fight to the death, I was thinking,” he says. Renjun laughs. Somehow, he thinks, his friendship with Jeno is some combination of awkward and comforting—a side effect, he thinks, of knowing someone all your life and only becoming close with them over the past few months. Not to mention the feelings that Renjun can’t figure out, even after Yukhei had texted him every _polyamorous attraction explained_ article he could find.

“Hey, listen,” Jeno says suddenly. “I could call Jaemin. And we could hang out.”

Renjun’s heart stops. Because, really, he’s never seen Jaemin in anything other than a school setting, never seen him anywhere outside of the building, never seen him wearing anything other than his school uniform. It was kind of the unspoken rule of their friendship—this stays in this empty classroom, and there’s no need to acknowledge it otherwise.

But, then again, Jeno managed to throw a wrench in 90% of Renjun’s plans anyway.

“Sure,” he says. “Why not?”

As it turns out, Jaemin shows up surprisingly fast—Renjun wonders where in the city he lives, if perhaps he lives in this same area, if perhaps he’s lived in the same part of the city as Jaemin all this time and never registered it. Renjun listens as the door opens, as he introduces himself to Jeno’s dad and to Soonkyu, and as he makes his way up the stairs.

“Jaemin’s never been here before,” Jeno says absently. He’s lying on his back on his bed, scrolling through his phone. “It’s weird, we’re friends at school but none of us ever hang out. We should change that.”

Renjun wants to say no, to say that it’s a stupid idea, to make up whatever excuse he can think of for why his friendship with Jeno and Jaemin needs to stay inside the school building. But right now he’s in Jeno’s bedroom because Jeno had let him crash there, no questions, after he’d been cordially told to leave the house for a few days by his aunt. And Renjun thinks that there’s no argument he could make against that kind of friendship, the kind he had in Yukhei and now, apparently, in Jeno. “Sure, he says.”

The door swings open. “What’s up, nerds,” Jaemin says, walking into Jeno’s room and making a beeline for the chair at his desk. “Why all the secrecy, what’s going on?”

Renjun’s heart stops suddenly. Thinking about Jaemin outside of school, when he let his mind go there, had always been something simple—he’d assumed that Jaemin was just another teenage boy, who smoked the occasional joint and did some kind of questionable things, both in terms of actions and in terms of dressing. He wasn’t expecting Jaemin to look that _good_.

_Goddamn you, Na Jaemin,_ he thinks. It’s the first time he’s ever allowed himself to think that, the first time any thought associating Jaemin with the words _good looking_ , _handsome_ , _attractive_ or _pretty_ hadn’t automatically been repressed. Renjun had gotten used to Jaemin-at-school, with his stupid smirk and his tie never properly tied, but this was a totally new thing for him to adjust to. Suddenly, he symphasizes with his aunt.

“Renjun’s crashing here because his aunt, quote, needs some time to adjust to the idea of him being a gay writer,” Jeno says. “It’s absolute bullshit.”

“She means well,” Renjun says quietly. Because she does—she’s overbearing and hard to deal with and sometimes she’s just _mean_ , but she means well. “It is bullshit, though I agree. She’s always had these ridiculous expectations of me, like, I’m gonna grow up and start my own dental practice and be exactly what my father could’ve been if he hadn’t gotten drunk and crashed his car with my mom in it. And I never got the courage to speak up and say anything about it until now.”

Jeno had been the cause for it, he thinks. Watching Jeno post-coming out is like watching a recovery—it’s not inspiring, but it’s admirable. And watching the way Jeno stood up to his aunt gave Renjun the adrenaline he’d always needed to just say what needed to be said. What should have been said months, if not years ago.

Jaemin begins to drum his fingers on Jeno’s desk in a haphazard, obscure rhythm. “You know, I always kind of assumed,” he says, “but hearing out loud that you’re a gay writer sounds so badass, you know?”

“It is a pretty cool title,” Renjun agrees. “Like, I’m Oscar Wilde or something like that.”

“I was thinking Shakespeare,” Jaemin says. “Shakespeare was definitely not straight, for the record.” Renjun frowns at him. A glance over at Jeno confirms that his face is in an identical expression. “What? I had a phase in middle school?”

“What, middle school Jaemin was an annoying theater geek?” Jeno asks in disbelief.

“You hit the nail right on the head there, Jeno,” Jaemin says. Renjun feels like his eyes are going to pop out in surprise. “Don’t know what you’re both so surprised about. I’m plenty dramatic.”

“It’s just,” Renjun says. “With all due respect, Jaemin, you don’t come off as particularly in tune with your emotions.”

Jaemin snorts. “I was a different person back then,” he says cryptically. “No way you guys wanna hear my tragic backstory of how I quit theater club.”

“I mean,” Renjun says. “I kind of just told you all about how my aunt is overbearing, and now all three of us know how my housing status has been temporarily put on hold until she _adjusts_. It’s your turn to overshare.”

“Why isn’t it Jeno’s?” Jaemin says. 

“Jeno’s not known the cold hard world like we have,” Renjun says. “His entire life is oversharing.”

Jeno opens his mouth as if to protest, and then finally says, “You know what, you’re right but you still shouldn’t say it so openly like that.”

They laugh—the three of them, in unison, and it makes that uncomfortable feeling in Renjun’s chest grow. He thinks about all the polyamory links Yukhei had sent him. _Don’t be stupid_ , he thinks. _Not like they’d both like you like that even if you do. You’ve never gotten that lucky._

“Alright,” Jaemin says. “So I’ve been in the foster system since I was three. Social services took me away from my mom because she was neglecting me or something, I don’t remember it because I was three.” Jeno laughs a little, covering his mouth. “You know, Jeno, that was a joke, you’re allowed to laugh.” 

Renjun snorts. “Dumbass.”

“So, anyway,” Jaemin says. “I moved around a lot until I was nine. Family that took me in then were an older couple, in their forties, who’d been trying for a baby for a long time and had never managed it, so they turned to the foster system. And things were good, you know? I was a healthy kid, and I was actually pretty nice at that age, can you believe it?”

“Nope,” Jeno says.

“Not in the slightest,” Renjun says.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Jaemin says. “So, anyway, sometime they figured out that surrogates exist, and they got one. I was fourteen, halfway through freshman year, pretty happy, and suddenly I was moved to another foster home because they didn’t think I was a good influence for their baby.”

“Holy shit,” Jeno says. “That’s fucking awful.”

“So I decided, out of spite more than anything, to prove them right and be a bad influence and be difficult,” Jaemin says. “Hence why I’m like this today. Crippling abandonment issues. Also me acting up had the side effect of no foster family wanting me, so I’ve moved around a ton the last few years.”

“Wow,” Jeno says.

“Somehow, that entire story is surprising and also wholly expected,” Renjun says. Jaemin grins at him. “I can’t believe you were a theater kid, though. That’s the most surprising part.”

“What kind of shows were you in?” Jeno asks, his grin mirroring Jaemin’s—mirroring the one that’s unconsciously made its way onto Renjun’s face.

“Um,” Jaemin says. “I was in _Oliver!_ ”

“No fucking way,” Jeno says. “Holy shit.” He leans back. “I mean, you’re both in my house so you already know that I have a stepmother, but—yeah, I have a stepmother, my dad married her when I was in ninth grade and I was honestly a little bitch to her for like, two years.”

“But she seems so nice,” Jaemin says. 

“Yeah, well, my dad started dating her a year after my mom died,” Jeno says. “It kind of felt like he was cheating on her memory, in a way. Like he hadn’t waited to get over her. Because I was still sad and fucked up over her not being around anymore—I kind of expected him to be the same.”

“What changed?” Renjun asks.

Jeno grins. “She inspired the best coming out story in the history of SM High, that’s what happened.”

Renjun bursts into laughter. Jaemin, ears red with flush, follows suit, laughing nervously. And Jeno follows, laughing loud and happy, and Renjun wonders absently to himself why the sound of the three of them laughing together feels so complete.

“We’re good now,” Jeno continues. “I mean—she’s not my mom, but we’re fine.” He smiles at Renjun. “Sorry for cutting you off after Mom died, anyway. It was weird, to be friends with you after that—because she liked you so much, you know? More than she liked me sometimes.”

“Me as Jeno’s mom,” Jaemin says.

“I’ll drink to that,” Renjun says. 

Jeno glares at them. “Sometimes I wish I was still hanging around with Mark and Donghyuck,” he says, but all three of them know full well he doesn’t mean it. 

Jaemin surveys Jeno suddenly, and then says, “So what changed with Mark and Donghyuck?” Jeno frowns at him. “Renjun says that Donghyuck said that you were the one avoiding him after the mess with me and you and Yiyang’s rumor mill, not the other way around.”

Jeno shrugs. “Mark and Donghyuck aren’t bad people,” he says, “but after a while you start to get tired of whatever the hell is up with them, you know? And it was like—it was a pretty convenient excuse for me to figure myself out again.” He sighs. “Sometimes you get tired of your old shit, the way you went about things before, and you think—why not just start afresh? Why not just do it differently—just do it better?”

 

It was that conversation, Jaemin thinks, and only that conversation, that had led him to be sitting here—at the town’s very loud and very new bowling alley, with his foster family, sipping on a Slushie and waiting for his turn.

Honestly, there had been no subtle way out of this one. He’d come back from Jeno’s only to be met with Herin, who’d asked him where he’d been in her weirdly smug way.

“So, where were you?” she asks. “Doing some shady stuff in a ditch somewhere?”

“Actually, I was hanging out with some friends,” he says. “From school. Contrary to popular belief, dear Herin, I’m not a total basket case.”

“Other people like you go to our school?” Herin asks. And, really, Jaemin can’t blame her for being so hostile to him—he probably deserved it, he didn’t remember the last time he’d said something nice to his foster siblings—but damn, she could probably tone it down. She was only fifteen, after all.

“Some very nice friends,” he rectifies. “Polite. Clean-cut. Don’t have a social worker on speed dial.”

“Damn, did you hypnotise them?” Herin asks. “Or—wait, Jaemin, you actually _like_ people’s company? And here was me thinking you loved your horrible antisocial ways.”

And somehow, because there was no such thing as a secret between those three, Jisung and Chenle had also figured out that Jaemin had _friends_ and _emotions_. (“Jaemin, I didn’t know you had a heart!” Jisung had said excitably. Jaemin didn’t have the heart to even roll his eyes.) And now here he was—at a bowling alley, spending time with his foster family.

Life sucked, and if Jaemin had known that hanging out with Jeno and Renjun would lead to this, he would have never—

He stops himself in the middle of that thought, because it’s an obvious lie and he doubts anyone would believe it. Jeno and Renjun—are two forces of nature, and Jaemin supposes he’s one too, and he’s not sure what would happen if three hurricanes intersected other than make a bigger, better hurricane.

Well, it’s not better for whoever ends up in the hurricane, but in terms of the hurricane’s well-being? Things would turn out fine.

“Jaemin, you’re up,” Chenle says. “Old man, probably can’t even bowl a strike.”

(He’s right. Jaemin sucks at bowling and now his entire foster family knows it. There’s absolutely no defense for hitting two pins on one throw and getting it in the gutter on the second.)

“Nana, you’re useless,” Jisung says.

Jaemin frowns. “Nana?” he says.

Jisung nods. “Nana,” he confirms. “From your surname.” He cracks a grin. “I figured since you bowl like an old lady, we should treat you with the respect that an old lady such as yourself deserves.”

Jaemin ignores the howls of laughter and sincerely hope Jeno and Renjun never end up going bowling with him. And then he wonders quietly to himself how Jeno-and-Renjun started to become an inseparable unit in his mind.

 

Jeno has noticed that every time Jaemin skips their weird lunchtime hangouts, Renjun always seems oddly concerned.

“You know, I’m sure Jaemin is just, like, doing whatever a Jaemin does in his spare time,” he says. “You shouldn’t worry so much about him, Renjun, it’s not like you’re married.” 

Renjun glares at him. “Why do I get the sense you want me and Jaemin to date?” he asks. “He said it himself—he’s not serious, he’s just fucking around.”

Jeno snorts. “Because it’s pretty damn obvious that you both like each other, and it’s exhausting for me to wait until one of you make a move. Seriously. It sucks. It’s like being a perpetual third wheel, but the other two aren’t aware that they’re third-wheeling you, and—”

“I get it,” Renjun says. “But I can’t date Jaemin. Not right now. It’s complicated.”

They’re sitting pretty close together—closer than they normally would, Jeno’s brain supplies—with Renjun’s notes discarded on the side of the table. There’s a reason he came up to Renjun a few minutes ago, he thinks, but he can’t remember it—not with this conversation going on.

“Don’t see what’s complicated about it,” Jeno remarks. “You like him, don’t you? And he likes you, that part is pretty obvious, so—there’s nothing left to do now than profit.”

Renjun smiles at Jeno like he’s fond of him, and Jeno almost lets it hit him—almost lets him think about the alternate universe where Renjun _is_ fond of him, and where Jaemin is too, however that works, and everything works out in the end.

But no. Renjun-and-Jaemin was a go, and Jeno would get over it like he’d always managed to get over his dumb crushes. Except, apparently, the one he’d been on-and-off nursing on Renjun for the past few years.

“I do like him,” Renjun says finally. “But—would you think I was insane if I said I can’t date him because I’m working out my feelings for someone else?”

Jeno’s heart drops. Of course—because he didn’t already have it bad enough, hopelessly gone for someone who’d never looked at him that way the entire time they’d known each other, but now there was not one but two people that he liked more than he would ever like Jeno. 

“I’d say that that’s pretty valid,” Jeno says carefully. “Have you looked into being poly?”

Renjun nods. “I didn’t—I told Yukhei, and he sent me a bunch of articles, but it just feels—like I’m being dramatic, or greedy, or that I can’t figure out my own feelings because it doesn’t feel _right_ that I could like two different people at once, you know?” He glances at Jeno. “You seem pretty in control of yourself. How’d you—figure out everything? About being gay, and whatever—”

Jeno shrugs. “It wasn’t like, an epiphany I had one day,” he says. “It was like, slow realization? Like, throughout elementary and middle school I thought I’d never had a crush and then in like, last year I realized that things I thought were just platonic friendship were—well. Not.”

“Go on,” Renjun says, a smile playing on his lips. “Who set it off?”

“Well, for one, Donghyuck,” Jeno says.

“Donghyuck?” Renjun asks in disbelief.

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” Jeno says. “Hyuck isn’t that bad, but also—most people wouldn’t choose to spend that much time with him if they didn’t have a stupid crush on him.” 

“Mark spends time with him,” Renjun says.

“Yeah, well, Mark is Mark,” Jeno says. “That’s a whole can of worms I don’t want to open.”

Renjun looks like he wants to ask more questions—he opens his mouth, then closes it again, then opens it again to ask, “Who else?”

“Huh?” Jeno says.

“You said, _for one, Donghyuck_ ,” Renjun says. “Who else?”

Jeno stares at Renjun, trying to gauge any kind of reaction—wariness? Hope? Unadulterated curiosity? He’s smiling slightly, teasingly, as if he’s planning on using this information to make fun of Jeno at some point (it wouldn’t be surprising) but other than that Jeno can’t read his face. And he doesn’t know if he could tell the truth.

“Well, my first crush,” he begins warily. “My first ever crush was on you.”

It’s Renjun’s turn to stare at him—wide-eyed, with a hint of what Jeno thinks is confusion. “What?” he asks. “When?”

“Since you came up to me after a fifth grade math test and demanded I tell you how I got a better mark than you, probably,” Jeno says. “I was pretty enamored with you, honestly. Didn’t realize it was a crush until later, much later, but—yeah, it’s a thing.”

Renjun swallows. “Huh,” he says. “Huh—wait.”

“What?” Jeno asks.

“You said _it’s_ a thing,” Renjun says. And Jeno sees it, the slip of his tongue, the casual reveal of the thing that’s been beating him up for weeks. “Present tense. Do you—do you still—”

There’s no point lying at this point, Jeno thinks. He’s too far gone to make up any lie that sounds believable. “Kind of?” he says finally. “But—it’s fine, you know? Because you have your feelings for Jaemin, and whoever the other person is, and I’m not—I don’t wanna make things awkward, or make you feel like you’re obligated to return the favour, or—it’s just a stupid crush. It doesn’t matt—”

And then Jeno doesn’t know what to do, because Renjun has leaned up and is _kissing him_ , and Jeno’s brain breaks and all he can do is sit there, still and shocked.

Renjun pulls away. “Was that too much?”

“I—what?” Jeno asks blankly. “What the hell was that?”

“Remember when I said I can’t date Jaemin because there’s another person I have feelings for?” Renjun says. “And you just—gave me all that advice that was so unhelpful, by the way, because you didn’t even entertain the notion that it was—” 

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Jeno says.

“It was you, Jeno,” Renjun says. “You and Jaemin. I just—I like you both, a lot, and I really don’t know what to do about it.”

Jeno laughs. He can’t help himself. In the corner of his eye, he sees Renjun’s expression go from painfully earnest to incredibly confused. “I’ve liked you since we were kids,” he says. “Even when we weren’t in the same orbit—I always _liked_ you.” He laughs. “Remember when I said you were valid to like two people at once?”

Renjun nods. “Yeah. That’s—such a disconnected thing to _say_ , Jeno.”

“Well,” Jeno says. “That’s—that’s my life right now, too. You…you and Jaemin.” He swallows. “I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t think I could possibly—”

“—get that lucky,” Renjun says. “But—I mean, I’ve gotten this far.”

“You need to talk to Jaemin,” Jeno says. “Figure it out. I don’t—I think you should talk to him first. But we can’t—I mean, he likes you, I’m not sure about me, but there has to be some agreement we can make because—”

“Yeah,” Renjun says. “You’re right.” But he looks nervous, more nervous than Jeno is used to seeing Renjun, and it almost makes him want to kiss him again.

_First, awkward conversations,_ he thinks to himself. _Then, kissing. Maybe. Assuming the first part goes well._

He smiles at the thought. Things might not work out, but for once—he feels like they could.

 

“So, what’s wrong?” Jaemin asks Renjun as they step out into the corridor, Renjun closing the door of the classroom behind him. “You look like you’re about to tell me that I’m dying or something, what happened?”

“A—a lot of stuff happened,” Renjun says. “Like, a lot of talk happened, and a lot of revelations were made, and—”

“You’re seriously freaking me out, Renjun,” Jaemin says. “Just say it.”

Renjun swallows. “Okay, so,” he begins, exhaling deeply, trying to get that adrenaline that he needed to say this. But—but he was scared, he’d been scared for as long as he could remember, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it just like that.

“Alright,” Jaemin says. “How about this. I’ll tell you a pretty big secret, and then you can finally spit out what it is you’re trying to say. An eye for an eye, or whatever.”

Renjun nods warily. The plan sounds almost like it would work. He thinks back to all the times he's had sudden bursts of adrenaline—brought on as a result of seeing others _just spit it out_. Jeno at his aunt's house, four days ago. And this—all these crazy feelings that had to be said but that he couldn't put to words. “Okay.”

Jaemin laughs. “Okay,” he parrots. “So.” He stares at the wall behind Renjun, leaning against the other side of the corridor. “I like you and I was trying to build up the nerve to ask you out until you said you couldn’t date me.”

“I thought you were kidding,” Renjun says.

“Yeah, well,” Jaemin says. “It’s a lot easier to pretend you’re kidding than to actually face the consequences of something dumb you said that didn’t result in anything.” He laughs hollowly. “But it’s fine, Renjun. You don’t have to apologize.”

“How come?” Renjun asks.

“I’m getting over it,” Jaemin says. “Give me a couple months and everything will be absolutely fine.”

“What if I don’t want you to get over it?” Renjun asks. Jaemin raises his head to look him in the eyes. “That’s—that’s part of what I wanted to tell you. That I really like you, and I want to—you know.” He averts his eyes, staring at the floor as if he’d never seen it before. “Go on a date. And stuff like that. If you want to, I mean.”

He looks up and Jaemin is smiling. “I do want to,” he says. “God, Renjun—I’ve been so damn _obvious_ , you _dumbass_.” Suddenly, his eyes widen slightly, his smile goes slack, and he adds, “What else? You said that was just part of what you wanted to say.”

“Yeah, I did,” Renjun said. And he couldn’t lose the nerve now—he couldn’t leave Jaemin with half of the story, without knowing everything that needs to be said. “There’s—there’s more to it.”

“What?” Jaemin says. His forehead creases slightly. “What do you mean?”

Renjun sighs. “There’s no easy way to say it, but I really like you…and I really like Jeno, as well. And I don’t like either of you _more_ or _less_ , it’s just _different_.” He sighs. “Jeno knows. And he likes me—and he likes you, as well. And I really…I’ve never dated _anyone_ before, not unless you count when I got a quote unquote girlfriend in first grade, let alone dating two people at once, and I just—it’s messy.”

Jaemin’s eyes widen. “Ah.” His face is impossible to read, such a far departure from the open book that Jaemin almost always is, and Renjun almost loses his nerve again.

“I shut you down before because I was trying to figure this out,” he continues. “I didn’t wanna date you before I figured out how I feel about Jeno. Because that wouldn’t be fair on either of you. And I didn’t wanna date you without telling you the whole truth, either.”

Jaemin laughs. “I didn’t even know that was possible,” he says finally. “To be interested—romantically—in more than one person at once.” Renjun swallows, waits for a rejection. It doesn’t come. “Everything makes so much more sense now.”

“What do you mean?” Renjun asks.

“You know,” Jaemin says. “Everything. I thought—I like you, I’ve known that since October or something like that, but I didn’t know I _could_ like anyone else without getting over you. And then—”

“Jeno?” Renjun asks.

Jaemin nods. He looks as if he’s making this realization as they speak, as if the pieces have suddenly started fitting together. “And I thought, you know, I can’t like Jeno because I like you, but I do. Both of you. And I think we need to discuss—this, whatever _this_ is, and figure something out, because this all feels so…”

“Complicated,” Renjun says. “It feels like—this is a concept that’s older than we are, you know? And we’re just teenagers.”

“Yeah,” Jaemin says. “But then—just looking at the facts, right? I like you. You like me. I like Jeno. Jeno likes me. You like Jeno. Jeno likes you. And—well, we deserve to be happy, right? You two, at least, if not me. And if whatever this is would make us happy—”

“We should figure it out,” Renjun says. “You’re right, of course.” He sighs. “There’s fifteen minutes left in our lunch period, if you want to do it now.”

Jaemin grins. “Well, might as well get it over with,” he says.

 

The door swings open as Jaemin and Renjun come back into the classroom. Jeno looks up from his phone when he sees them. “So?” he says expectantly. “You two dating yet?”

Jaemin looks at Renjun, who flushes and looks away at the floor. “Something like that,” he says, linking his fingers with Renjun’s. “Heard something kind of interesting from Renjun, though, Jeno.”

“Oh?” Jeno says. Jaemin _hopes_ that Jeno was aware of Renjun’s plans, and that this hasn’t just been something Renjun threw in—but at the end of the day Na Jaemin will always be who he is, and he’s incapable of saying something like this without making it light-hearted. “What did you hear?”

“I heard that you like both of us,” Jaemin says.

Jeno swallows, and Jaemin can tell he’s nervous because Jeno is an open book. They’re bantering— _flirting, perhaps_ , his mind supplies unhelpfully—but under the bravado and the confidence Jeno is—has always been, really—the same person he was. Nervous. Uncertain. Endearingly awkward. “He did?” he asks. “And—and what do you think about that?”

Jaemin isn’t stupid—Jeno looks shy, and nervous, and _hopeful_ , and that’s all he needs to make his decision. He makes a mental note to Google all of this when he gets home, but now he doesn’t need to be totally sure. He doesn’t need to have all the facts when Jeno is looking at him hopefully like that, and with the memory of Renjun’s shy earnest expression back in the corridor.

“I think that I feel the same way,” he says. “And I think we should go out somewhere today, after school, and talk this out. Preferably over milkshakes.”

Jeno grins at him. “Are you asking us on a date, Jaemin?” he teases, a smile playing across his mouth. 

“Maybe I am,” Jaemin says. “Or maybe I’ll change my mind and make you pay for your own damn milkshake. I would not have a problem with that.”

Renjun laughs. “Do you even know where to get milkshakes, Jaemin?”

“Hell yeah,” Jaemin says. “I went out to get some with my foster family after bowling on Sunday.” They stare blankly at him, and Jaemin realizes that—as far as they know—Jaemin doesn’t care about his foster family. “Oh, right, we made up and it was all fine and good. I discovered that I am absolutely shit at bowling. It was nice.”

Jeno glances at Renjun. “Hey, Renjun.”

“Yeah?” Renjun says.

“I think I know what we should do on a date sometime,” Jeno says, his face breaking into a wide, genuine smile.

“Bowling alley?” Renjun suggests.

“Bowling alley,” Jeno confirms.

“I fucking hate you guys,” Jaemin says.

_fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that was a wild ride!! thanks so much for reading if you've gotten this far and i really really hope you all enjoyed it!!
> 
> if you enjoyed, leave a comment or reach me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/neosveIvet) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/970524_com)!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i'll try to have the second part up soon-ish but i can't promise anything
> 
> i'd also like to thank a bunch of sm artists including but not limited to f(x)'s victoria, luna, and sulli, red velvet's irene, seulgi, and wendy, snsd's sunny, smrookies's herin and koeun, and the entire nct hyung line for lending their names for teachers and random students.
> 
> if you want to ask me questions or tell me to quit writing for good, i can be reached on [twitter](https://twitter.com/neosveIvet) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/loonanator).


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